DMK Councillors stage walkout at Coimbatore Corporation Council

The Councillors led by A. Nandhakumar walked out accusing the Mayor S.M. Velusamy of not giving sufficient time to study and debate the budget.

February 22, 2014 12:41 pm | Updated May 18, 2016 10:10 am IST - COIMBATORE:

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam councillors walking out of the Council Hall in Coimbatore on Friday to protest against the lack of time to debate the Corporation Budget for 2014-15. Photo: M. Periasamy.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam councillors walking out of the Council Hall in Coimbatore on Friday to protest against the lack of time to debate the Corporation Budget for 2014-15. Photo: M. Periasamy.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Councillors walked out of the Corporation Council hall on Friday to protest against the lack of opportunity and time to debate the budget. They, however, sat through the budget session in the morning.

Shouting slogans after Finance and Taxation Committee Chairman R. Prabhakaran had presented the Budget for 2014-15, the Councillors led by A. Nandhakumar walked out accusing the Mayor S.M. Velusamy of not giving sufficient time to study and debate the budget.

As against the established practise, the Mayor had chosen to have the debate on the budget on Friday afternoon, around 2 p.m., within two-three hours of the budget being presented. Until recently, the Corporation used to have the debate a day after the budget was presented.

Though there was nothing great in the budget or no new announcements, the Mayor providing a few hours to study the 100-plus pages budget document and a few pages of his speech smacked of his authoritarian approach, said a few DMK Councillors.

Scheme

The only schemes that were being implemented are those under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission scheme and those that were sanctioned in the previous regime.

DMK Councillor Meena Loganathan said that only the colour of the cover of the budget documents had changed in the last three years.

Projects like skywalk, subways, road-over bridges across railway crossings, scheme roads and many such schemes that found a mention in the last two budgets were yet to see the light of the day.

The administration was playing a joke on the people by making announcements that could not be implemented.

Ms. Loganathan, who was in the Council hall with a helmet and ribbon said, the former was to protect herself as it was during the last budget meeting that the ruling party councillors had attacked her and the ribbon was to indicate the lack of democracy in the Council hall.

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