— Photo: A. Muralitharan

MAKING WAY: Workers pulling down shops and buildings on GST Road near Chromepet on Thursday.

CHENNAI : The State Highways Department launched an encroachment clearance drive on the Grand Southern Trunk (GST) Road near Chromepet on Thursday.

Buildings in violation of the rules, including shops and other concrete structures, were pulled down by Highways Department workers on a one-km stretch from MIT bridge up to Tiruneermalai Road-GST Road intersection.

As they had been warned earlier, shopkeepers and other building owners removed their belongings to enable the workers pull down the structures. The compound wall of a cinema complex was among the structures that came down.

Even the Chromepet Police station compound was on encroached land and a portion of the compound wall was likely to be pulled down on Friday, officials said.

Clearing these buildings is part of the six-laning work of the arterial road. Highways department officials surveyed the road a couple of months ago and served notice on the encroachers. The old stormwater drains will also be replaced.

They said the drive would continue until all encroachments were cleared.

Residents' association activists said the official agencies had allowed the encroachments to grow and remain in place. If the encroachers had been stopped early, a lot of money could have been saved.

The association had recently written to the Government under the Right to Information Act, seeking to know why the road-widening work was delayed for the past few months.

Due to the inaction, every inch of available space had been taken over during the past years, they said.

The encroachments prevented free movement of vehicles and created traffic snarls, said motorists and residents.

The residents want the Department to relocate lamp-posts and transformers of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board to the roadside.

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