The Chennai Metro Rail Limited on Friday informed the Madras HC it will not touch the heritage portion of the P.Orr & Sons building.
A division bench comprising Justices Elipe Dharma Rao and M. Venugopal recorded the submission made by senior counsel R. Thiagarajan and posted to March 19, further hearing of the petition filed by Indian National Trust for Architectural and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).
According to the petitioner, P.Orr & Sons was designed by Robert Chisholm, consulting architect to the then government of Madras.
The structure was built in 1873. The authorities failed to see it as a Grade I heritage structure and that its value should not be be diminished for the purpose of CMRL without considering the heritage value of the building.
Preservation of heritage structure was a Constitutional mandate and every authority was bound to follow it. It has come to light that acquisition process of a part of the land on which P.Orr &Sons structure stands has been initiated.
The proposal to demolish a part of P.Orr & Sons listed on the Justice E. Padmanaban committee report as Gr.I, was completely a violation of the statutory norms, INTACH added.