CM, ministers out of city, escape rain pain

Three AIADMK ministers from the district too made it conspicuous by their absence as one flew out to Delhi to attend the Election Commission’s hearing on two-leaves case while the other two were concentrating on Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur. 

On Wednesday, Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar was in Delhi while Minister for Rural Industries P Benjamin and Minister for Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture K Pandiarajan was taking stock of rain effect in Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur on instructions from the CM.

Minister for Municipal Administration SP Velumani who drew parallels of flooding in the city to Bengaluru, London and United States while touring the city on Tuesday too left the city and joined the CM in official events in Western belt. 

While a former bureaucrat and a district minister found no fault in it – citing that disaster protocol being activated and functioning, the Opposition observed that the presence of state’s head will do impact official machinery.

MG Devasahayam, former IAS official, said it is better for ministers to steer clear of the relief and field work as they would only waste and interfere with the government machinery by their stage-management and making it a media-circus, which also puts the actual relief in the backburner. “Though CM is the head of Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management Agency, the Disaster Management Act provides for every situation for the bureaucrats to go by,” he said. He suggested appointing of rain-relief experts instead of alien IAS officers in districts. When DT Next contacted, Benjamin said that CM was already in hold of the situation priming the government for relief work and the CM would be back to the city soon. 

Taking exceptions, former Mayor M Subramanian blamed the government of making sitting ducks out of Chennaites. “When DMK was in power, the DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi and former Dy CM MK Stalin would keep us on our toes, and the entire government machinery will be on tenterhooks even if it was a drizzle. Even before the monsoon sets in, we would receive advice not to give road cuts post-September. The present ruling dispensation’s priorities lie on sticking to power and securing their party symbol,” Subramanian said.