Stalin walks out of review meeting

By Saptarshi Bhattacharya

CHENNAI, JULY 28. The Mayor, Mr. M. K. Stalin, walked out of a review meeting on the Perambur flyover at the Chennai Corporation today, as the confrontation between the ruling party and the Opposition intensified.

The exit of the Mayor took place when a group of Opposition councillors, who came to the meeting without `invitation', refused to leave the room. The officials, including the Commissioner, Mr. J. T. Acharyulu, did not heed the Mayor's direction to ask the councillors to leave, Mr. Stalin said later.

The face-off began soon after the meeting got underway at 11 a.m. at the Ripon Building, as a group of Opposition councillors, including Mr. R.Thyagarajan of the AIADMK and Mr. Dakshinamurthy and Ms. Thirugnanasoundari (both TMC), entered the room and ``demanded that they be part of the meeting without having been called to participate.''

Mr. Stalin said there was nothing in the rules governing the civic body that allowed the councillors to attend a departmental review meeting on their own. Only the Standing Committee Chairpersons were invited to attend such meetings besides the department officials. ``The councillors barged into the room to create disorder to achieve political ends, especially when we are trying to execute the project, which has been bogged down in various problems,'' he added.

The invitees included the Chennai Collector, the Tahsildars of Purasawalkam and Perambur, the Project Manager, National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC) and Prof. P. K. Aravindan, IIT, Madras, besides the Commissioner, the Additional Commissioner, the Chief Engineer (bridges) and the Works Committee Chairman.

However, the TMC leader, Mr. P. Vetrivel, said the elected members of the Standing Committee had the right to attend any review meeting and the Mayor could not, under any law, prevent them from doing so. The Mayor, he said, was politicising the issue, as it was evident that the construction work would not be over by the end of his term.

``Now that the contract period has expired, the Government should intervene at this stage so that the work is executed soon. At least, four lakh people are suffering due to the unfinished work,'' he said.

The ruling party leader, Mr. C. V. Malayan, said the agenda for the meeting included extension of the contract period for NBCC, other technical details and setting a deadline for the completion of work. ``By doing things like this, the Opposition was delaying the execution of the project,'' he added.

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