The Tamil Nadu government on Friday (August 14, 2026) informed the Madras High Court that it has constituted an expert body to protect from encroachments the sprawling Thamaraikani waterbody, located opposite the Infosys campus at Sholinganallur in Chennai.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan, Additional Advocate General (AAG) P.V. Balasubramaniam said, the government constituted the committee of experts a week ago.
The submission was made in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by anti-corruption organisation Arappor Iyakkam, represented by its managing trustee Jayaram Venkatesan, in 2019 against the construction of a building for the Semmenchery police station on the waterbody.
After the filing of the case, the petitioner organisation amended its prayer and insisted upon removing all other encroachments as well from the waterbody. It insisted upon issuing a direction to the government to evict all the encroachers and restore the waterbody to its original state.
It was brought to the notice of the court that Thamaraikani tank was part of Periya Eri, which was a mosaic of tanks, also consisting of Valaleri and Velalkani tank. Thamaraikani tank was originally spread over 13.47 hectare, as per the Public Works Department’s tank memoir, and it had been irrigating around 250 acres. However, now, there had been large-scale encroachment by private and government institutions.
The AAG told the court that apart from the police station building, whose inauguration had been stayed by the High Court in 2019, there was also an electricity sub-station, a large Aavin milk factory, and a government higher secondary school adjacent to each other, and those institutions had to be protected.
He said, the government had protected the existing extent of the waterbody by demarcating its boundaries and that a committee of experts had also been constituted to suggest the ways and means to protect it from further encroachments in the future.
After recording his submissions and granting four weeks’ time for the government to file a comprehensive status report, the judges ordered that the expert body may also consider the suggestions to be made by the petitioner organisation for the protection of the waterbody.
Published – August 14, 2026 04:44 pm IST
