Councillors of the DMK walked out of a meeting of the Udhagamandalam Municipal Council held on Friday. Former vice-chairman of the Council J.Ravikumar led the protest.
The members walked out of the meeting in protest against a move of the ruling party members including chairperson K.Sathyabama and vice-chairman V.Gopalakrishnan to pass a resolution conveying birthday wishes of the Council to former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. The walkout was preceded by heated exchanges between members of the DMK and the AIADMK with the former expressing the view that the Council should not recognise in such a manner a convicted person. However, the resolution was recorded with the latter claiming that Ms.Jayalalithaa had been victimised.
Earlier, the deplorable state of affairs on the street lights front dominated the proceedings. Practically, all the members lamented that street lights were serving their purpose only in a few parts of the municipality.
While Sampath (AIADMK) said that only about 10 per cent of the street lights were burning, Farzana (Congress) regretted that the presence of a large number of street dogs was adding to the woes of people. Regretting that development works had come to a standstill in most of the wards, many of the members vacated their seats and sat on the floor.
Mr.Ravikumar said that at a number of places, people were not getting adequate water and sewage was overflowing. Municipal Engineer Reuban Suresh Ponniah said that water problem was not serious. However, at 17 places there were problems relating to drainage. Efforts were on to raise Rs. 5.62 crore to repair them.
To a question on the third water supply scheme from the Parsons Valley Hydel Reservoir which was under implementation for the past few years, the Engineer said that about 40 per cent of the work still remained. When members complained about the conversion of the Children’s Park near the lake into a major private sector amusement park with big buildings, the chairperson said that the municipality had nothing to do with it as the place was under the control of the Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation.
