Chennai: The Madras High Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea seeking to withdraw a notification restricting movement of vehicles through the ecologically sensitive Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve (STR) during the night hours as a preventive measure to prevent mowing down of the wild animals by the vehicles.
The bench of Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy pointed out that it had not passed any order banning the vehicular movement on the Bannari-Karapallam stretch of the Coimbatore - Bengaluru national highway. It said it had only directed the Erode Collector to strictly implement his notifications issued in 2018 and 2019, not given effect to following a protest from the members of the public, then.
Former MLA PL Sundaram, a resident of Panampalli in Sathyamangalam, had filed a petition against the ban on the grounds that essential commodities were not able to be ferried to the 144 villages located on the stretch while the students of these villages have to walk for 4 km to reach their schools. Without providing any alternative route, the ban should not be given effect to, he added.
In the plea, Sundaram also suggested speed breakers and rumblers at regular intervals to avoid mowing down of the wild animals and a limit on the speed of vehicles. He also contested the claim that a “large number of wild animals were killed in accidents on the stretch”. Quoting Forest department statistics, he told the judges that only 24 animals were killed in the past 10 years arguing it was “not established that they were run over by motorised vehicles”.
Additional Advocate-General J Ravindran also pleaded with the bench to consider relaxing the restrictions. The bench adjourned the matter by a week after directing the authorities to file their counters for the fresh PIL. Last week , the bench while passing orders on a PIL petition from city-based advocate SP Chockalingam, had directed the authorities concerned to strictly enforce from February 10, the notifications issued by the Erode Collector restricting vehicular traffic through the Tiger reserve.
It also slammed the officials of the government departments concerned for the “lapses and inaction in implementing the notifications already issued by the Collector”. When the Collector enforced his orders last week, there were large scale protests from the public and the traders amid traffic congestion on the route.
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