3 years on, Jayalalithaa promises glitzy film awards ceremony

Responding to Velachery DMK MLA Vagai Chandrasekar during the debate on grants to the Environment and Forest and Information and Public Relations departments, she said the awards were not given for the last three years due to various reasons. Moreover, similar awards for TV personalities were also an AIADMK government achievement, she said.  “The DMK when in power had not announced awards for police personnel for three years” she added.  

When Chandrasekar wanted former actor Sivaji Ganesan’s statue to be placed in a prominent place, Jayalalithaa said the statue removal was ordered by the High Court and the government had been mollifying it stating the statue would be placed in a soon-to-be-built memorial. Deriding the MLA for not knowing the rules, she said “if the MLA files a public interest litigation to place the statue in a specific place, we are ready for it.” 

Later after the DMK had walked out, Jayalalithaa, referring to the Sivaji issue said one Srinivasan moved the court which ordered that the statue should not be a hindrance to traffic. This was during M Karunanidhi’s tenure as CM. “When the court sought a clarification petition, the DMK did not provide it and hence Chandrasekar was in no position to advise the AIADMK government” she concluded. Local administration minister SP Velumani said that daily garbage collection from TN local bodies was 17, 000 tonnes daily including 5400 tonnes in Chennai. 

After the December floods, 2.35 lakh tonnes garbage was removed in a few days, he said in response to Chandrasekar’s  demand that government clean up Pallikaranai lake of various pollutants. The lake was clean as a supervisory committee looked after it and regularly collected water samples and forwarded reports to the government, he added. When the MLA wanted action to remove seema karuve lam plants (prosopis juliflora), the minister said following the Madurai High Court bench ordering its removal, government was trying to find out the extent of its growth all over TN. Once this was known, it would be removed soon, he added.