Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

DMK claims on Corporation schemes misleading, says AIADMK

Special Correspondent

COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore Corporation's infrastructure development schemes for the city are running into a political crossfire. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) has contested the claim by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) that the latter is to get the credit for bringing the schemes to the city under the Central Government's Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

A slice of the standoff was provided at a meeting last week in which councillors of both the parties argued over who should take the credit. In a sequel to that episode, leader of the AIADMK in the Corporation Council P. Rajkumar says in a statement that the DMK's claim is contrary to the truth. The Central Government launched the mission in 2005 when the AIADMK was in power in the State.

AIADMK councillor M. Natarajan argued on these lines at the meeting to emphasise that it was unfair on the part of the DMK to claim that its leaders had helped bring the scheme to the city. "It was the Communist Party of India (Marxist) councillor C. Padmanabhan (now the Corporation's North Zone Chairman) who asked the officials in the Council whether the Corporation had received any information about its having been included in the mission," he said. "Only then, were efforts made to draw up schemes," he said to point out that the DMK could not take the entire credit for the mission coming to Coimbatore.

Only after questions about the mission were raised in the Council, did the Corporation put together some old and new schemes for submission to the Central Government. Therefore, the DMK cannot claim that its Government, which came to power in 2006, has been instrumental in getting Coimbatore city included in the mission.

Mayor R. Venkatachalam contends that the AIADMK has not brought the mission to the city. "We even went as a delegation led by the then Deputy Mayor K. Raghupathy to meet the Chief Minister (Jayalalithaa) and make a representation that schemes under the mission should be implemented in Coimbatore."

The Mayor says that the team could not meet her. And then it met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi with a fervent appeal for the mission. "Even the then Mayor, T. Malaravan of the AIADMK, did not want to accompany us to meet the Chief Minister."

The Mayor says that the delegation, of which he was a member, had asked for schemes for only around Rs.600 crore. But, with the DMK, Communist parties, Congress and the MDMK councillors actively pursuing the mission with the Government, schemes worth more than Rs.3,000 crore are set to be implemented.

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