Poes Garden residents object to Jayalalithaa memorial plan

Poes Garden residents on Saturday objected to the conversion of Jayalalithaa’s bungalow into a memorial. The residents, who attended a public hearing conducted by the state revenue officials and the Madras School of Social Work, objected to the memorial citing that the roads leading to the Poes Garden were narrow. “The locality will lose its tag of being a residential area if a memorial was constructed and cannot handle the large number of visitors thronging the sprawling house,” residents told the state officials, who have completed the survey and the designing part to establish the memorial.

Earlier, J Deepa, niece of the late AIADMK leader had moved the Madras High Court challenging that the property cannot be converted into public memorial as she and her brother Deepak are legal heirs to the coveted property. Jayalalithaa’s confidant and ousted AIADMK leader VK Sasikala had been staying at the Veda Nilayam until February 2017 before being sent to Bengaluru jail by the Supreme Court in a disproportionate assets case.

“The Poes Garden property was purchased by my grandmother and it should come to the grandchildren,” Deepa has been reiterating to media.

“Now with the local residents opposing and legal hitches pending, the memorial may take some more time to materialise,” said a government official who evaded queries related to the Siruthavur and Kodanad Estates also owned by Jayalalithaa.

“The state government officials should hold talks with the legal heirs Deepa and Deepak and provide compensation to them. Then the locals should be informed that the memorial will not attract large number of people daily,” said Madras High Court advocate CL Sridhar, who is also an AIADMK functionary from Central Chennai. Veda Nilayam is like a temple for AIADMK cadre and it should be converted into a memorial and this is a popular public wish, he added.