More than 230 families living in Thanakottiyammal Thottam and Muthureddy Thottam in Chennai’s T Nagar have spent decades seeking electricity connections, revealing how land classification can determine access to a basic urban service even in one of the city’s established neighbourhoods. Their struggle is not simply about a power connection. It is about how different departments interpret responsibility when homes occupy land recorded as poramboke, or government land, and how residents are left between those interpretations.
The issue came back into public view on September 9, when more than 50 residents protested outside the substation on Bazullah Road. Residents told DT Next that they have been seeking electricity for more than 20 years. They said water and sewer connections were eventually provided, but electricity remained unavailable to several houses. The contrast has created an uneven form of urban citizenship: households are recognised sufficiently to receive some municipal services, but not sufficiently for a domestic power connection.
The two settlements have existed for several generations. According to CPM T Nagar Block secretary M Kumar, families are said to have been living there since 1935 after migrating from Kancheepuram, Chengalpattu and Tiruvannamalai. More than 230 families now live in the settlements. The length of occupation is significant because it shows that the problem is not a recent encroachment dispute. It is a long-standing settlement issue that has continued through changes in land administration, urban growth and public-service provision.
The administrative problem begins with the status of the land. Residents seeking a no-objection certificate, or NOC, from the Revenue Department were told that the land did not fall under its control and that the NOC therefore could not be issued, according to the report. When the land was treated as private property, residents were asked to produce patta, the document commonly used to establish recognised ownership or possession. The result was a circular requirement: an NOC was unavailable because the land was not considered to be under the department’s control, while a patta was demanded when the land was treated as private.
Tamil Nadu’s electricity regulations contain a route for connections in at least some such circumstances. Regulation 27 (12) of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Distribution Code allows electricity to be provided to houses on poramboke land with an NOC from the concerned government authority. Residents must also provide an undertaking that the connection does not confer ownership and that they will vacate if the government requires the land.
That provision separates two questions that have become entangled in the T Nagar settlements. The first is whether a household can receive electricity as a basic domestic service. The second is whether the household has ownership rights over the land. The regulation, as described in the report, recognises that a connection need not automatically settle the question of title. It allows service access while preserving the government’s position on ownership and future use of the land.
In practice, however, the requirement for an NOC has remained a barrier. The residents’ account suggests that the formal availability of a regulatory pathway has not translated into an administrative decision capable of moving an application forward. This gap between a rule and its implementation is central to the dispute. A regulation can permit a connection, but residents still require an identifiable authority to certify the relevant land status and issue the document needed by the electricity provider.
The history of the settlements adds another layer to the question. The land exceeded the ceiling limit and was acquired by the government under the Land Ceiling Act of 1956, according to the report. It was not subsequently taken up for development and remained as it was. The Slum Clearance Board declared the area recognised slum-clearance land in 1972. A relaxation introduced in 1984 allowed former inhabitants to make claims over the land.
These details point to a settlement that has moved through several administrative categories without reaching a stable resolution. It was affected by land-ceiling action, left undeveloped, identified by the Slum Clearance Board and later brought under a framework allowing former inhabitants to make claims. Yet the central service question remained unresolved. The problem was therefore not only the absence of infrastructure. It was the inability of institutions dealing with land, slum clearance and electricity to produce a common administrative position.
Water and sewer connections followed a different path. They were not provided initially, but residents eventually secured them after court proceedings. Electricity remained a separate and more persistent problem. A case filed in 2003 led to an order in 2004, after which electricity was provided to 40 families in February 2005. The earlier court-linked outcome demonstrates that connections were possible for at least some households, but it did not settle the issue for all residents of the two settlements.
The difference between those 40 families and the larger population is important. It suggests that a partial resolution did not create a system for processing the remaining claims. Instead, access appears to have remained dependent on individual circumstances, official interpretations or the scope of the legal order. For the other families, the basic service question continued despite the settlements’ long history and the provision of other utilities.
The State government is now planning to make it easier for some homes on poramboke land to receive domestic electricity connections without an NOC. The proposed provision would apply only to houses with a built-up area of no more than 250 square feet. It would also exclude several categories of land, including Water Course Poramboke, Meikkal, Mandaveli or Meichchal Tharai Poramboke, forest land, railway and other Union government land, patta land belonging to religious institutions and Temple Poramboke land.
The proposed change could reduce one procedural obstacle, but its stated limits mean it will not automatically resolve the T Nagar dispute. Its operation would depend on the precise category assigned to the land, the size of each house and whether the relevant authority can establish that the property falls within the eligible class. The proposal also leaves the broader question of long-standing settlements untouched: electricity access may be separated from ownership, but land records and departmental jurisdiction still determine whether the service can be delivered.
This is the institutional challenge exposed by the case. Electricity distribution is often treated as a network and billing question, while land authorities treat the same household through the categories of title, possession and government control. Slum-clearance institutions may recognise a settlement for planning or rehabilitation purposes, while revenue records continue to classify the land in a way that complicates service delivery. Without coordination, residents can be recognised by one part of the state and excluded by another.
The issue also shows why the existence of a service connection can carry administrative meaning beyond electricity. A connection does not necessarily establish ownership, as the undertaking under Regulation 27 (12) makes clear. But for residents, it can determine whether a home is safe, usable and integrated into the city’s everyday systems. A settlement with water and sewer access but without electricity occupies an unstable position: physically present in the city, yet only partially served by its infrastructure.
The available evidence does not establish how many households in the two settlements currently lack electricity, whether all homes meet the proposed 250-square-foot limit or which exact poramboke category applies to the land. It also does not establish when the proposed government provision will take effect or how applications will be processed. Those details will determine whether the policy change becomes a practical route for residents or remains another conditional framework requiring multiple departments to agree.
What the T Nagar case confirms is that the electricity dispute is rooted in an unresolved relationship between land status, institutional jurisdiction and basic-service delivery. The immediate policy question is whether eligible homes can receive connections without an NOC. The larger urban question is how Chennai handles established settlements whose residents have lived in place for generations but whose access to infrastructure remains tied to unresolved land classifications. The next significant developments will be the final form of the proposed provision and its application to the two settlements.