CM’s intervention saves Anna arches

Sep 06, 2012 |

chennai

Tags:

J. Jayalalithaa

The landmark Anna arches will not be demolished thanks to chief minister Jayalalithaa’s intervention.
A decision to this effect was taken at a review meeting chaired by the chief minister at the Secretariat on Wednesday with officials of the Highways department. The demolition work of the arches had been taken up to facilitate the construction of two flyovers at a cost of `117 crore at the junction of EVR Periyar Salai and Anna Nagar 3 Avenue.

After the meeting, Ms Jayalalithaa announced that the flyover would be constructed with some minor re-alignments without demolishing the arches.

“I have directed the officials to carry out the flyover work without demolishing the Anna arch, one of the landmarks in the city which was inaugurated by former chief minister M. G. Ramachandran in 1986,” she said in a statement.

The CM said that she had ordered the work to be stopped when she heard that the Anna arches were being demolished. She said that the arches was constructed during the tenure of Former Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran and it was one of the landmarks of the city, occupying a prominent place in the hearts of the people, much like the fame of MGR. She added that the previous DMK government had sanctioned the Rs 117 crore-flyover project to decongest EVR Periyar Salai.

The state highways department had started its unsuccessful bid to demolish the arches on Saturday night. However, the work had been delayed after one of its diamond cutters malfunctioned and a crane operator had doubted the capacity of the machine to lift the arches.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/186739" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-5ffa97e6962d0e845810338b1c094d94" value="form-5ffa97e6962d0e845810338b1c094d94" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80480548" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>