Mayor Saidai Duraisamy on Friday filed a White Paper on the functioning of the Chennai Corporation under the AIADMK and slammed DMK treasurer M K Stalin for “spreading falsehood” in public forums.
When the council of the civic body met on Friday, members of the DMK decided to walk out of the hall stating that there was no sign of the White Paper that their party had demanded consistently.
Responding, Duraisamy said he had come ready to file the White Paper and wanted them to be in the hall to counter it, if possible. Tabling the White Paper, Duraisamy slammed M K Stalin and former Mayor Ma Subramanian for what he called “administrative incapability”.
While the Corporation spent a total of `2,218.3 crore in the 10 years that Stalin and Subramanian were Mayors, the civic body under the AIADMK, had planned projects to spend a whopping `3,189 crore in just 18 months.
“We have done more in 18 months than they could do in 10 years,” said Mayor Duraisamy. He said development had also been across the board and no differentiation had been made on the basis of the party that won the particular ward. Even in those wards in which the opposition was in control, the Corporation is spending crores of rupees to develop infrastructure, as instructed by Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.
Likewise, across parameters, including works under MP and MLA development fund, the Corporation under the AIADMK was leaps ahead. Also, the corporation was concerned about solving the issues of the people, reflected in the number of petitions received in the last last 18 months, Duraisamy said.
“We have received 89,111 petitions till recently had have acted on 95 per cent of them,” he said, and pointed out that unlike during the DMK period, when members of the public were met only on a single day in a week, he meets the public on all working days in his office and at home.
Duraisamy also presented figures across departments, including health and education, and said the Corporation under the AIADMK was taking the city in the path of development.
Meanwhile, raising objections to remarks made on Stalin, members of the DMK protested inside the hall. They were removed by guards on the orders of the Mayor.