Held by the Federations of OMR Residents Associations (FOMRRA), the ‘Meet The Candidate’ Event was held in cognisance of the rising number of cases in the city. The association, which oversees 150 apartments and 60,000 candidates, had held a similar in-person event in 2019, to raise awareness on the candidates and the importance of people’s votes.

“Very few votes are cast by the members in these two constituencies. MLAs will obviously implement the policies of those who voted for them, and we need to show our strength in the voting booths to have our concerns heard. We can be sceptical of candidates’ abilities, but we must not be so cynical that we do not vote for anyone at all, because that is our loss,” said said Harsha Kodha, co-founder, FOMRRA. The five-hour event featured current MLA Aravind Ramesh from the DMK, and former MLA KP Kandan from the AIADMK, both from Shollinganallur constituency. Also contesting from the same constituency were MNM’s Rajeev Kumar and NTK’s S Micheal. Contesting for the Tiruporur constituency were SS Balaji from the VCK, K Arumugam from the PMK and N Lavanya from MNM.

Each candidate had a 15-minute introduction and then various residents’ association office-bearers conveyed questions from their locality to the candidates for another 15 minutes. The most frequent questions were regarding availability of piped water supply and sewage lines for Sholinganallur and Tiruporur. Locals were also curious about the environmental policies, citing the importance of the several lakes in their neighbourhood. Residents were also eager to see a toll-free OMR. “We are participating in such an event for the first time. Our City Park layout, which is adjacent to the prestigious SIPCOT IT Park, does not have a drainage system, proper roads, or solid waste management system. We need to interact more closely [with the candidates] to achieve our objectives,” said Pramod Nettur, who attended the live event.