Chennai councillors play name game
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While cases of dengue and cholera are being reported due to unhygienic conditions and garbage mounds in the city, elected representatives of the city corporation are busy playing petty politics.
During the previous DMK regime, the city corporation council had wanted to rename the existing English names of city roads into Tamil thus wasting time and energy of officials.
The then state government had gone a step further and renamed the historical Government General Hospital after the late Rajiv Gandhi to please its ally, the Congress.
Now it is the turn of the ruling AIADMK council to play politics with names. While a woman councillor on Friday spoke about rechristening the names given to corporation parks during the previous regime, another councillor wanted to know about the acquisition of OSR land in Anna Arivayalam.
The issue led to a war of words between Mayor Saidai Duraisamy and former mayor M. Subramanian.
While the Government General Hospital has been renamed, its rechristening has not added any value to this hospital.
Similarly ruling AIADMK councillors periodically talk about the OSR land in DMK headquarters; if there are any illegalities in the OSR land, the civic body should acquire the land rather than waste the council’s time debating the issue again and again.
And now councillors want to rename the 50-year-old park in Thiru Vi Ka Nagar. However, renaming the park will not attract more public or add more facilities for morning walkers. Even its timings won’t be extended to encourage late evening visitors.
It’s time local body heavy-weights thought about the public as new names and politics are not going to satisfy those who voted for them and earn some reputation for the Dravidian parties they represent by carrying out public welfare initiatives.
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