The Madras High Court has requested Advocate General (A-G) P.S. Raman to convene a high-level meeting with the secretaries of municipal administration, forest and tourism departments and come up with a proposal on fixing the carrying capacity for the ghat road leading to the Nilgiris.
A special Division Bench of Justices N. Sathish Kumar and D. Bharatha Chakravarthy constituted to hear forest-related cases, expected the proposal to be submitted before the court by March 28 after the convening of the meeting between the secretaries and the Nilgiris Collector.
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The interim order was passed on a writ petition filed last year complaining about the road expansion work being undertaken on the Mettupalayam-Udhagamandalam road in both Coonoor and Kothagiri stretches and also the Udhagamandalam-Gudalur stretch in the Nilgiris district.
The petitioner alleged that the expansion was being undertaken by making vertical cuts on the slopes in the flanks of the ghat roads without conducting a proper scientific study pertaining to susceptibility to landslides and the consequent threat posed to the motorists on the roads.
However, Special Government Pleader T. Srinivasan reported to the court that no vertical cut had been carried out on the hill side and that only works such as reconstruction of damaged culverts and construction of retaining walls, to protect the embankment, were being undertaken.
Providing specific details of the works, he said, an existing cut stone culvert near Pudukadu between Barliar and Coonoor had got damaged and hence a new pipe culvert was being constructed now with a retaining wall in order to avoid accidents and major landslides at the location.
Similarly, boulders had fallen near the Nanthagopal bridge and hence the construction of a wall had been approved at that site. Further, a technical expert committee had inspected a couple of other sites where certain issues had been raised and the works over there would be done as per its advice, he said.
Advocates Chevanan Mohan and Rahul Balaji told the court that the frequent landslides and the necessity to cut the rocks on the hillside arise only because of way too many tourists visiting the hill stations during on-season as well as off-season and the failure to fix a carrying capacity for the ghat roads.
After hearing them, the judges suo motu impleaded the Municipal Administration and Tourism secretaries also as respondents to the writ petition filed by one Shantha Thiagarajan and requested the A-G to convene the high-level meeting for resolving all issues related to the ghat roads.
