CHENNAI: A day after actor Kamal Haasan exhorted his fans and public to send their complaints on corruption to the minister concerned, the contact details of chief minister and his cabinet colleagues have vanished from the Tamil Nadu government portal.
All details including native place, Chennai address, telephone number in Chennai and moffusil addresses of Chief Minister 'Edappadi' K Palaniswami and his cabinet colleagues have been removed from their respective pages in the government portal.
This disappearing act came a day after the filmmaker, irked by the vehement attack he faced from the AIADMK and its ministers, asked fans to shoot off their complaints. Kamal insisted that they use emails - that can keep a trail - unlike postcards that can easily be ignored.
Kamal had also shared the URL http://www.tn.gov.in/ministerslist so that the people can easily find the contact details including email addresses of all ministers to send complaints.
This indeed is the digital age, as Kamal pointed in his statement to stress sending emails. But it works both ways, as is evident now. Soon after Kamal issued the statement on Tuesday night, the pages were whitewashed. All that a visitor can see now is the name of the minister, rest of the columns are blank.
There still is a way, if you are one of those with a complaint to lodge. Visit the State Assembly website and look for the ministers' in the list of MLAs. All these contact details are available there.
Kamal Haasan is yet to react to this development, but as information about the whitewash spreads on social media, it won't perhaps be long before the next taunting tweet.
However, when asked, School Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan told media persons at Madurai that he was not aware of the development.
On the contrary, Finance Minister D Jayakumar down played the incident. He said, “For all MLAs, email addresses are given in the Assembly website and only the MLAs can become Ministers. So, the charge that contact details have been removed cannot be accepted.”