While Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has inaugurated hundreds of new buildings of various departments through video-conferencing from the Secretariat, the Chennai Corporation is awaiting the inauguration of 48 buildings.
According to sources, the Corporation has been delaying the inauguration of the buildings hoping that Chief Minister Jayalalithaa will visit one of such buildings for the launch.
The buildings that have remained unoccupied for many months include Amma Maaligai, Amma canteens and hospitals that could benefit thousands of people.
With damage reported to Ripon Buildings, it needs urgent repair at many places. Once the Amma Maaligai is thrown open, around 1,000 employees could shift there to the modernised work space enabling the civic body to take up renovation work in the Ripon Buildings, sources say.
The Corporation has finished work on the 1.5 lakh-sq ft Amma Maaligai at a cost of Rs. 23 crore long back. In fact, the inauguration was slated for 2015 Pongal but it did not happen then.
The opening of all the 48 buildings awaiting the official nod could improve the public health and civic services, officials say.
It is unheard of in the bureaucracy. For some, it may come as a shocker that the AIADMK government is looking to create a Financial City in Chennai’s outskirts. “Well, it is not the one that was planned by the previous DMK regime. We scrapped it completely. This is something new,” says a bureaucrat.
Most know that the Financial City was the pet project of DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin when he was the Deputy Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Envisaged as a centre to attract investments in banking, insurance, risk and wealth management and so on, Stalin even identified 180-acre plot in Sholinganallur – Perumbakkam villages for the proposed Financial City.
Then the government changed. For a while, the proposal was still there – at least on paper. In July 2014, however, the AIADMK government folded up the plan that was to come up on about 72-acres of wetland in Perumbakkam.
Clearly, the government now is eyeing a different location. Already, teams have been touring the country to look for the model to be replicated here. One of the teams recently visited Gujarat International Finance Tec-city (Gift City). More teams could travel to South East Asian countries to study the possibility, sources say.
The government college teachers associations were perplexed by the turn of events last week when they witnessed two persons occupying the post of the Director of Collegiate Education.
The present director M. Devadoss had been on leave when he was replaced by another person, K. Sekar. The latter had been in the post only for a week when Mr. Devadoss returned one afternoon, armed with a court order declaring him as the rightful occupant of the seat.
Already government lecturers have the complaint that he holds the post of the principal of the government college of Cheyyar even while being a DCE.
What has upset them even more is that two junior principals have been appointed regional joint director of Tirunelveli and Madurai.
Meanwhile, the Directorate of Collegiate Education website has not made the required changes. It continues to show K. Sekar as the DCE (FAC) – full additional charge though the letters are now being signed by Mr. Devadoss, college principals say.
(Reporting by Aloysius Xavier Lopez, Sangeetha Kandavel and R. Sujatha)
