Eventful year saw DC show the way

[1]

It has been an eventful year for Tamil Nadu, and DC, Chennai, took up the challenge and offered the best and exclusive reports covering crime, politics, aviation, education and, of course, Mullaiperiyar and Koodankulam row.

In December we gave an exclusive report on IB’s recommendation for CISF/CRPF cover at the Mullaiperiyar dam site.

Taking a cue from our page 1 report, which said IB had suggested it in 2006, the government urged the Centre to implement it.

Other political parties and petitioners in courts joined the chorus. The CM’s letters to the PM and the show of unity among political parties made him concede that Central forces would be deployed at the dam soon.

The last two months of the year saw protests growing in Koodankulam. We reported the protests and their impact from Ground Zero, and wrote about the need to have the plant operational in view of TN’s power shortage. The PM recently confirmed that the plant would go on stream soon.

November had another breaking story on terror knocking on TN’s door with the arrest of two suspected members of Indian Mujahideen from a house in Selaiyur, southern suburb of Chennai.

Another page 1 exclusive was about the threat of virtual terror with international links wherein the parents of a Chennai girl were threatened to pay a huge amount for not releasing Facebook clips of their child’s innocent exchanges with her girl friend.

We consistently followed the land-grab cases and several readers mailed and called seeking help to retrieve their land from encroachers.

The Vellore report on criminals ‘lobbying’ with police and revenue officials using the name of the health minister made the CM expel five functionaries.

The story on Chinese-made FM radios leaking police conversation in Kovai made the cops stop conversations on radios. The news of malfunctioning of emergency chain on EMUs evoked strong reaction from worried passengers.

An exclusive report on pilots complaining of mysterious laser beams tracking aircraft at Chennai airport drove the DGCA to order a probe.

The report, ‘Government general hospital in Chennai runs out of anaesthetic gas, surgeries cancelled’, made authorities rush to correct the problem.

We were the first to say that United India Insurance will implement the CM’s health cover plan. Our Assembly election coverage for over a month left no major constituency or issue untouched and our special report that Praveen Kumar will take over as chief electoral officer was on the dot.

Our reports captured the Samacheer Kalvi’s roller-coaster ride and the merger of Anna Universities of Technology. We also revealed that an agricultural college in Theni was partly functioning in a marriage hall.

An expose on fake courses in Coimbatore Fana institute spurred the minister to launch an investigation. The government’s decision to not run mini buses in Chennai was first reported in our paper.

Our Ooty reports stopped quarrying and landscaping at Bison’s Valley and installation of cellphone tower at Mudumalai Tiger Reserve.

The list of our special reports seems endless. The year 2011 was really eventful and we look forward to presenting such interesting, breaking news reports in 2012 too.