Remember
Áthipatti’village ?
There is a village in Aruppukottai in Virudhunagar by this name. A slight variant Áthipattu’exists in
Thiruvalluvar district having a Railway station too. Maravan Atapattu
played 90 Tests for Sri Lanka, scoring 5502 runs with 16 tons; in ODIs – in 268
he made 8529 runs and he played two T20s too. He had a forgettable debut in Nov
1990 at Chandigarh out for duck in both innings; his next chance came in Aug 1992 at Colombo
against Australia- he made 0 & 1; in Feb 1994 at Ahmedabad, he bagged a pair
again. After that he next played in 1997 at Dunedin, where he made 25 & 22
and back home in Apr 97 at Colombo, he made another duck and 25.
A
district collector, a judge, and a police official are all kidnapped in broad
daylight ~the kidnapper tries to avenge the society for the death of his
kin. It is the storyline of Ajith starrer
Çitizen’released in 2001 and ran packed houses. Vasundharadass was the heroine. The fictional coastal fishing hamlet
Áthipatti’goes missing and its close to 700 odd inhabitants all killed, decades
back – surprisingly, the village disappears from the official gazette and
maps. Ajit, the father and the son lived
there. The son tries to take revenge of
all the officials who were involved in that mass massacre.
If
you ever thought that it was totally filmy stuff, here is something that
occurred in the city suburb of Madipakkam and reported in Times of India titled
‘Road disappears from corpn map’:
Land
Sharks Grab 12,000 Sqft Of 30-Foot-Wide Madipakkam Thoroughfare !
Were it not for the fact it
involves Corporation of Chennai, a civic body singularly lacking in mind, this
case would have been worthy of an investigation by Sherlock Holmes.
A 30-foot-wide road in
Madipakkam has mysteriously vanished from the corporation's map and its
officials vehemently deny that it ever existed. It's another matter that
residents of the locality say whatever's left of the road, most of which has
been encroached upon by land sharks, is still in use or that maps of Chennai
Metropolitan Development Authority clearly mark the road. Residents say some
individuals encroached upon Twelfth Street, in Karthikeya Nagar, Madipakkam,
and constructed concrete structures right on the carriageway . According to a
complaint by social activist M Mahentheran, these individuals have grabbed at
least 12,000sqft of the road, now worth crores of rupees, after the corporation
took over the locality during its expansion in 2011.
A reply by Corporation of
Chennai zonal officer (Zone 14) in response to an RTI query by Madipakkam
resident Madhan Mohan proved to be flabbergasting for the petitioner and his
neighbours. No such road exists or is marked on our maps, the official said in
his reply, citing the Sholinganallur tahsildar.
“He said the corporation
has no role to play in connection with the road or encroached land and that if
any body is responsible, the revenue department major role in it,“ Madhan Mohan
quoted the official as saying. He said the Chitlapakkam block development officer
(BDO) maintained the road till its transfer to Zone 14 of Corporation of
Chennai in 2011, when the civic body annexed the locality . “We were
responsible for maintenance of the road till 2011. As of now, its maintenance
and further development is the corporation's job.“
Mahentheran had been
fighting to retrieve the land from encroachers since 2009.“It's a tough job,“
he said.“Revenue officials are hand in glove with the land sharks. Madipakkam
resident S Balaji has filed a civil suit in an Alandur court regarding the
encroachments, but the case is still pending in court.
Strange
are the ways of people
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
6th Apr
2015
Source : Times of
India, Chennai edition :
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Road-disappears-from-corporation-map/articleshow/46801512.cms
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