[1]Chief minister J. Jayalalithaa has taken exception to DMK chief M. Karunanidhi for his purported remarks undermining her effort to save Anna Arch, a landmark in the city, from demolition and charged him with “enacting a farce” on this as the decision to construct a flyover by razing the arch to the ground was taken during his rule.
“Does not the five-time chief minister (Karunanidhi) know that government decisions are taken at several levels according to business rules?” she asked and said that none had consulted her either on the flyover project or the demolition of the Anna Arch. “Nor have I passed any orders in this regard,” Jayalalithaa said.
The previous DMK regime had cleared a project in 2010 to construct a flyover to connect Nelson Manickam Road and Anna Nagar 3rd Avenue junction for `117 crore. After the AIADMK stormed to power in 2011, this work was taken up like all other development work that would be implemented despite the change of guard.
Karunanidhi’s remarks that the decision to demolish the structure could not have been taken by officials and that after completing much of the demolition, the chief minister had issued an order to retain it on the ground that it was a memorial constructed a long time ago, was false, Jayalalithaa said.
The chief minister wondered if Karunanidhi made the remarks despite being aware of business rules or whether he feigned ignorance about how the administration functioned. She alleged that he had heaped charges on her merely out of frustration that her decision (about saving the monument) had put paid to his “plans” to demolish the structure.
“We have the satisfaction of protecting the Anna Arch,” she said, adding that the flyover project would be executed after slightly realigning the structure to the east.
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[1] http://archive.asianage.com/anna34jpgcropdisplayjpg-754