: Madras High Court today directed two top officials of Southern Railways to send a complete list of abandoned vehicles, particularly two wheelers in parking lots of Railways in Tamil Nadu within two months to Superintendent of Police of Railways here to enable it to dispose them.
The first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T S Sivagnanam, gave the directin to General Manager, Southern Railways and The Divisional Manager (Commercial), Chennai Division.
The bench stated this while disposing of a PIL by lawyer E Jaya Sankar, seeking to direct Railways to create a website under Section 4 of the RTI act, 2005, to support the SP to maintain proper records of such vehicles in the parking lots,also issued notice to Counsel for Railways and Government Pleader S T S Moorthy appearing on behalf of the SP.
Sankar said it was the practice for commuters to park vehicles at authorized parking lots in the evening, pick them up in the morning to go to work. The fees were also paid.
But in the past few years,there had been regular incidents of theft of petrol from two wheelers, loss of vehicles, damage and disappearance of parts, for which those responsible for maintainance had miserably failed to safeguard.
He said he had made a representation to Railways about no notice board having fee structure and their reply accepted their mistake and regretted the inconvenience caused.
The petitioner also alleged that there are many unclaimed vehicles occupying the lots for months together. This was the problem being faced by all parking lots in Tamil Nadu,he said.
When the PIL came up for hearing,Railways did not dispute that the problem existed and said if vehicles, as submitted by the petitioner, are seen, a large number of them are now junk.
On Aug 5 2014, Railways had written to Railway police, which is stated to be under the State Government, to make a list of these vehicles and remove them.
The bench directed Railways to send a complete registration numbers of vehicles dumped, through the contractors to whom the parking area had been let and forward it to the SP, Southern Railway, who would verify if those vehicles had been used in crimes and if otherwise abandoned,to dispose them of as per the normal legal practice to do so.
It directed the Railways to forward the list within two months to the SP and for him to carry out the exercise of identifying/disposing it within three months.
