Chennai: Coming down heavily on the Tamil Nadu government over illegal hoardings, the Madras High Court on Friday wondered how many more lives should be lost as a result of such banners, endangering the lives of people. This came after a 23-year-old techie was crushed to death by a water tanker as an illegal flex board crashed on her in Chennai on Thursday.
The court also directed the Tamil Nadu government to pay interim compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the family of the deceased woman, identified as Subashree who died in the road accident.
"The money should be recovered from the officials who failed to prevent the illegality," the court said and asked if the government will take a firm stand against such unauthorised banners.
"How many more litres of blood the state government needs to paint the roads with," a Division Bench of Justices M Sathyanarayanan and N Seshasayee wondered.
The court asked whether at least now Chief Minister K Palaniswami will be willing to issue a statement against such unauthorised banners.
"There is zero respect for lives in this country," the court said pointing to "sheer bureaucratic apathy."
"We have lost faith in this government," the court observed.
The observations were made came when the bench heard a plea by social activist 'Traffic' Ramaswamy and an urgent mentioning by advocates V Lakshminarayanan and V Kannadasan. They brought to the court's notice the techie's death on Thursday following crashing of the illegal hoarding.
"Just imagine the girl could have contributed to the GDP of this nation. Couldn't that politician have conducted the family marriage without banners?" the court asked. At least now the political parties must start a movement against such illegalities, the court said.
The bench then directed the appearance of police officers and Chennai corporation officials in charge the area where the accident occurred to be present in the court later in the day and adjourned the plea's hearing.
The techie riding a two-wheeler lost balance and fell down after an illegal hoarding put up by an AIADMK functionary crashed on her and she was run over by a water tanker that came just behind her.
(With PTI inputs)
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