THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Some years ago, during Prof J Chandra’s term as Mayor to be exact, Thiruvananthapuram City had a twinning programme on with Newham. A team from the London Borough even visited. During C Jayan Babu’s term as Mayor, Newham invited him over. The Mayor didn’t go, a junior official did. And that was that.
There’s an even older story on the internet. The Wikipedia site on Thiruvananthapuram says the city twinned with Galveston in Texas, US, in 1994. Galveston’s site also lists ‘Trivandrum’ as a sister city. But even veterans like Jayan Babu, who stepped down as Mayor recently, doesn’t recall Thiruvananthapuram’s special relationship with Galveston, the seaside city immortalised in the Glen Campbell song.
Barcelona, apparently, is not prepared to fade into twinning history without a ruckus like its American and English counterparts. Must be the Catalonian blood. Shashi Tharoor MP, keen to twin Thiruvananthapuram with the Spanish port city, has opened a fresh battlefront against former Mayor Jayan Babu, who, says Tharoor, had slow-pedalled on his pet project.
On Tuesday, Shashi Tharoor described Mayor designate Adv K Chandrika’s remark, that the Barcelona project was not feasible, as ‘’unfortunate’’ and ‘’tending to be misunderstood.’’ He said that he had invited the Barcelona Mayor over after discussing the matter with then Mayor Jayan Babu. On the strength of it, the Barcelona city council forwarded a draft agreement to the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, but the latter had not budged for ten months. ‘’No one said then that the Corporation does not have the mandate to sign an agreement. The Left Front argued that the project was not feasible only during the elections,’’ Tharoor said in a statement on Tuesday.
Jayan Babu, who was not amused, shot back on Wednesday that his council did not sit on the project. Politics, he said, was never allowed to meddle in development activities during his tenure. ‘’We had submitted the project for the government’s approval on February 9, 2010, before discussing it in the Council,’’ he said. ‘’There was a twinning programme with Newham before. The truth is, nothing came of it.’’
According to him, Barcelona had informed they will not be making any financial commitment. In spite of all this, the LDF had taken an interest in the project for the sake of developing this city, he said. ‘’Shashi Tharoor’s claims of large-scale development occurring here is something that has to be proved by time.’’ Compared to the Barcelona Mayor, the Thiruvananthapuram Mayor is short on powers, says Jayan Babu. ‘’For example, I cannot say anything offhand regarding the Vizhinjam or Technocity projects which were two areas lined up for possible co-operation with Barcelona. Or the RCC, for instance. The Mayor is not even on the board of the RCC. I had spoken about this to Tharoor,’’ Jayan Babu told Expresso.
‘Possible areas of collaboration’ between the two cities had included IT, tourism, healthcare, Vizhinjam port, sports, the international film festival and basic infrastructure.
PS: Barcelona has twinning programmes with 26 cities from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Shanghai, China. Thiruvananthapuram is one of the seven sister cities of Galveston.
trivandrum@expressbuzz.com