Published in The New Indian Express, Chennai, on October 19, 2010:
CHENNAI: After several last-minute delays, retrieval of about one ground of land (worth Rs six crore) that had been encroached upon by the Bharat Petroleum-owned petrol filling station at Chamiers Road-Boat Club Road intersection finally began a few days ago.
After Express carried a news item on delays in recovering the land encroached on September 24, the Collectorate had woken up and questioned its taluk officials on the ‘delays.’According to sources, based on the Express report, collector V Shobana had asked full details on the issue from S Abid Husain, Tahsildar of Mylapore-Triplicane taluk and instructed him to evict the encroachment without delay.
With a ‘clear instruction’ from the collector, Husain on October 6 issued a final ultimatum to BPCL to stop supply of petrol and diesel to the particular filling station with immediate effect.
“The letter had sent a mighty blow to the BPCL management, which was dilly-dallying,” said R Natarajan, a research scholar who had unearthed the encroachment through RTI applications in 2008.
With no option left, BPCL management had given an oral commitment to the Tahsildar a week back and started removing their four underground storage tanks placed there.
For the past one week, labourers were seen clearing the top surface to take out the tanks. However, BPCL failed to adhere to the ‘stop supply order’ and the filling station was seen functioning on Monday. The drive to remove the tanks is expected to last another week.
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