CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) has been caught providing 135 power connections to commercial establishments in a building without prior approval. In fact, the files pertaining to the approval for the building’s construction have mysteriously disappeared. What is worse, the Board had failed to act after its vigilance cell had asked it to issue notices to the consumers, as per documents available with Express.The TNEB’s vigilance cell had found that records pertaining to the sanction of the power services in the building on Kasi Chetty Lane, Sowcarpet were unavailable with the revenue unit. The reason attributed was the shifting of the office. Even the owners were not able to furnish the papers. The report also stated that the building neither had the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority’s (CMDA) approval nor the sanction of the Chennai Corporation for constructing additional floors.Interestingly, the building owned by public charitable trust Sathrasala Venkatachellum Chetty Charities, was even served a demolition notice by CMDA in 1997. Further, information available through RTI filed by J Parasmal states that the CMDA had rejected the plea of the charity to regularise the ground floor plus four floors, besides an additional fifth floor under the Building Regularisation Scheme.In 2009, the then TNEB executive engineer, S Rajarajan, had sent a notice to the charity stating that 135 power lines were being used for commercial needs and sought from the occupiers , plan copies approved by the Corporation, the CMDA and the chief electrical inspector to government (CEIG). But, the charity did not provide the plan copies. Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation’s (TANGEDCO) legal advisor A Arunagiri even sent a note to the TNEB executive engineer to check if the consumers were the lawful occupants. But not only was action was not initiated, but TNEB executive engineer T A Seralathan, in a letter in May 2011, had stated that there was no need for the papers to prove lawful tenancy as the tenants themselves had stated that they were lawful tenants.When Express contacted Seralathan, he justified this. The logic: the connections would have been given only after the tenants furnished all the papers, so why ask for the records again?
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