A decade and a half ago, it looked like the Tiruporur Assembly constituency in Kancheepuram was all set to occupy the centre stage in the political and administrative map of Tamil Nadu.
But things went the other way thanks to the outburst from a section of political parties that ridiculed the move to create an administrative city comprising the State Secretariat and residential quarters for government staff over a sprawling 2,000 acres of land at Thiruvidanthai and Thaiyur hamlets between erstwhile Old Mamallapuram Road and East Coast Road.
Going back
It all began in 2002, when the then government proposed to set up the administrative city on the outskirts of Chennai to overcome the stagnation of infrastructure development and traffic congestion in the State capital.
As a follow-up in 2003, the government issued an order declaring that land dealings in Thiruvidanthai and Thaiyur villages have been banned in view of the proposal.
Residents here viewed this proposal as a boon as they had already witnessed efforts taken earlier to convert the constituency as an industrial hub come a cropper.
The subsequent government neglected this project, though it pursued the proposal of creating a new Secretariat complex.
Meanwhile, real estate activity along OMR which was subsequently renamed as Rajiv Gandhi Salai, picked up thanks to the boom in the information technology sector.
Several multi-storied residential, office and information technology complexes sprung up in a short span of time, which gave an impression that this Constituency would shed its rural image and become “an extended urban area”.
However, the change people here desired eluded them again, primarily due to the unplanned urbanisation activity in the last decade.
Investor attraction
Several private housing project companies found it difficult to complete their projects on time as they had realised, though belatedly that good road connectivity alone is not enough to attract investors, a real estate developer said.
“We sold our land too soon. Had we restrained ourselves, we could have continued with agriculture, our only source of income,” said Muniyappan of Thaiyur.
In the lurch
A majority of land owners who had sold their property expecting that they could take up any other business have been left in the lurch now and their only means of sustenance is the money they get as interest after sale of their land.
Interestingly, in the last Parliamentary elections, nearly 2,500 people opted for ‘NOTA.’
Now, voters say, this number might increase.
A majority of land owners who had sold their property expecting to take up businesses were left in the lurch
