Chennai: A Public Interest Litigation has been filed in the Madras high court to direct the state government to take criminal action against housing secretary Dharmendra Pratap Yadav and other officials of CMDA and Chennai corporation, for their willful failure to take action against the building violations by Chennai Silks in which a fire accident took place on May 31.

The PIL filed by social activist Traffic Ramaswamy, which also sought a direction to the state government to take action against building violations particularly by Sree Kumaran Jewellery and Chennai Silks through out Tamil Nadu and all other buildings in T.Nagar area, is likely to come up for hearing on June 5.

According to Ramaswamy, a petition was filed in this court to demolish the Chennai Silks due to building violations. The high court ordered demolition of a few floors. Thereafter, the Supreme Court also upheld the same in 2006. Thereafter, the 4th floor to 6th floor of Chennai Silks were demolished in 2007. However, within a few days, the owner of the building had constructed 4th floor to 7th floor without any building plan and approval, violating the orders of the High court and Supreme Court. After 2007, several unauthorized constructions were made in T.Nagar area. But the officials of CMDA and Chennai corporation failed to take action against them. The housing secretary was fully responsible for these unauthorized constructions. Housing secretary Dharmendra Pratap Yadav was continuing in the same post for several years against the government transfer rules. Using the powers vested with him, he exempted and relaxed the development rules and allowed these unauthorized constructions, Ramaswamy alleged.

He said the fire accident in Chennai silks could not be controlled by the fire service department, because there was no space to park the fire engines vehicles and water supply lorries to extinguish the fire. The housing secretary kept the regularization application of Chennai Silks pending for long time without any reasons. After 2007, there was no stay to demolish the Chennai silks building.