Title - Residents move court on metro work at Saidapet

CHENNAI: Residents of Saidapet have moved the Madras high court against metro rail work in the vicinity of an apartment complex, saying the project will reduce the width of access road to the property off Anna Salai. Around 600 people live in 95 flats at the Baid Mehta Complex, built more than 25 years ago.Residents staged an agitation and blocked traffic recently after metro rail workers accidentally damaged pipelines and blocked water and sewage connections to the building. Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) acquired 985sqft of land, including the gate to the complex's access road, and paid compensation for the property.According to the alignment planned for the transit system, CMRL engineers plan to build a pillar diagonally opposite the access road. The secretary of the apartment residents association, K Udhaya Kumar, said they approached the court because, when completed, it would reduce the width of the access road from 33 feet to 20 feet. "Metro officials said the road will be only 9 feet wide during construction," he said."This will be inadequate as more than 300 cars use the road." Another resident of the apartment complex, T K Arun, said flat owners would not be able to develop the property in the future as Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority rules stipulate that the access road should be at least 33 feet wide. "The apartment complex is more than 25 years old and will need to be rebuilt in the future," Arun said. "If the access is narrow, we will not get permission for reconstruction."

Under the law, he said, no government body was allowed to build a structure that obstructed entry and exit from a property to a public road. "Courts have passed orders in many cases stating that access to a property should not be hindered," he added.

Residents said they feared they would be at risk in case of a fire because fire tenders will not be able to enter a road that is only 9 feet wide. Udhaya Kumar said the residents did not oppose acquisition of land for metro rail because they were against the project. "But we had no idea what CMRL was going to do with the 985sqft of land it acquired," he said. The residents have filed a writ petition in the high court demanding an interim injunction to stop CMRL from carrying out any construction work in front of the apartment complex gate and to ensure that the complex has a 33-foot-wide access road from Anna Salai.