The community at Our Lady of Visitation Church in Abiramapuram is unsettled after Chennai Cor[oration slapped a notice on a structure and sealed the civil work that the community is building inside the church campus but is said to have also used up public space alongside the boundary wall.
The GCC staff pasted a notice on the edifice on Tuesday morning challenging the development and issuing a stop work notice. The church is located on St. Mary’s Road.
Neither the parish priest nor the leaders of the church council want to talk about this issue.
This is possibly because it may have links to the cold vibes that has been prevailing between residents of a colony located alongside the church and the diocese of Madras-Mylapore. The colony land is said to be owned by the diocese and a long-drawn legal battle has been going on and it is said the residents of the colony lost the main legal case and some have vacated the colony where some 40-plus families reside.
This issue has generated bad blood betwen the residents who are also also members of this church and the church council and the city diocese.
The structure in the church which is at the centre of controversy was a grand plan to build a grotto and church bell tower to mark 25 years of the new church premises. This project has been delayed.
When Titus, a senior council member was contacted, he did not want to talk about the issue and asked Mylapore Times not to report it. The parish priest said that since he took charge here recently he is not fully aware of the issue.
