The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) on Tuesday told the Madras High Court that it could not take up development of the Buckingham Canal since 2015 due to heavy encroachments on the national waterway and that it was up to the State government to clear those encroachments.
Appearing before Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy in a 2014 writ petition, filed by Kasturba and Indira Nagar Residents Welfare Forum, central government senior panel counsel V. Chandrasekharan said the Buckingham Canal was a part of National Waterway-4 (NW-4).
He told the Bench that NW-4 runs 1,078 km-long, covering several canals in the Kakinada (in Andhra Pradesh)-Puducherry stretch. In 2009, IWAI decided to exclude 50 km stretch of the Buckingham Canal between Ennore South and Muttukadu in Tamil Nadu from being developed as a national waterway.
Such a decision was taken because of the construction of Mass Rapid Transport System (MRTS) pillars and railway stations on the waterway flowing through Chennai city. Thereafter, in 2015, IWAI considered developing the stretch from Sholinganallur to Kalpakkam, but the work could not commence due to encroachments.
On June 25, 2021, the State government wrote to IWAI and wanted to know the status of the proposal to develop the south Buckingham Canal stretch from Thiruvanmiyur to Kalpakkam. IWAI wrote back on October 7, 2021 stating that it had actually planned to develop the Buckingham Canal in the first phase in 2015.
However, since the plan could not fructify due to encroachments, now the entire plan had been reformulated by developing Krishna River from Muktalaya to Vijayawada (82km) in the first phase, followed by the development of a 233 km stretch from Vijayawada to Kakinada and Rajahmundry to Polavaram in the second phase.
Since the first phase work was going on at present, the development of Buckingham Canal from Thiruvanmiyur to Kalpakkam could be undertaken only in the subsequent phases, IWAI said. However, Additional Advocate General J. Ravindran said, the State government had decided to spend ₹403.86 crore for developing the canal.
He said the government had on December 3, 2020 sanctioned ₹1,281.88 crore for holistic improvement of the Buckingham Cana, as well as the drains of Cooum and Adyar rivers. Totally, 52 drains had been planned to be developed with the money and ₹403.86 crore had been allotted for the Buckingham Canal alone.
The works planned for the improvement of the canal included the construction of a see-through compound wall, flood protection wall, de-siltation, removal of sludge, placement of bins at the banks of the canal, development of park, walkways and so on, the AAG said.
When amicus curiae S.R. Raghunathan insisted upon eviction of encroachers, the AAG said demarcation of the boundaries of the Buckingham Canal within Chennai district had been completed. Now, mapping of boundary through digital global positioning system would be taken up to avoid litigations pertaining to the boundaries.
The encroachers would also be enumerated through collection of biometric data and a scheme would be devised by the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board to rehabilitate them, the AAG said. After hearing them, the judges adjourned further hearing of the case to Wednesday.
