Keep walking
Having good roads is not enough for accessibility if there is no public transport. Despite alleged government efforts, even after eight months, the residents of Peenjamandai hillock in Anaicut, Vellore, find the 6.4km road to the hillock is of not much help to them as most of them have to walk, as they don’t own vehicles nor are there any buses and autos charge Rs 1,000 uphill. This scribe learnt of this the hard way, as without a vehicle I had to either walk or hope to get a lift to go uphill. After covering two kilometers on foot, I got a lift from a rider who was carrying a liquor bottle. However, after covering a distance, as the rider asked me to wait, I decided to continue on foot. Thirsty and out of water, I got help from another rider and eventually reached the hillock. On the return trip I had to rely on an ambulance.
Diversion of resources
Ahead of health minister Ma Subramanian’s visit to Tenkasi, officials were instructed to ensure sufficient people participated in the function. As requests with DMK functionaries to gather a crowd did not help, more than 100 domestic breeding checkers across the district were brought to the meeting spot to show strength. “We are already short of domestic breeding checkers. Since senior officials diverted the domestic breeding checkers to the minister’s function, we found it very difficult to perform mosquito eradication activities,” said a health official.
No skipping
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was met with a rousing welcome from the BJP cadre during the public meeting organised in Tirunelveli, where they kept chanting ‘Modi, Modi ...’ apart from party slogans. As he was speaking in Hindi, it was being translated to Tamil on the go. At one point, he got excited and spoke for a long period without giving space to the translator. As the translator couldn’t keep up and left out some sentences, Union Minister of State L Murugan interrupted the translator and asked him to translate the portions left out.
Keeping tabs
As the Lok Sabha elections are round the corner, DMK has appointed an IT unit in each constituency to monitor the election campaign of local functionaries and fix any gaps in campaigning. The move comes after a recent door-to-door campaign ‘Illandhorum Stalinin Kural’ launched by the party, under which local functionaries were required to visit 150 houses in the morning and 150 in the evening and distribute pamphlets. The party headquarters got information that the functionaries were not carrying this out properly and decided to take remedial measures.
Not as per norm
When the members of school management committee at VVC Corporation School at Puliyakulam asked Coimbatore Corporation to deploy one more teacher based on student strength, as there are more than 70 students, a top educational officer in the corporation said as 10 students take leave daily on an average, one more teacher cannot be deployed. However, as per the student - teacher ratio, if there are more than 60 students, there should be two teachers and one headmaster in a primary section. The committee has filed a Right To Information (RTI) petition with the corporation seeking information on the student - teacher ratio in the last week to get a certified copy to put pressure on the corporation for further action.
(Contributed by SA Praveena, Thinakaran Rajamani, P Srinivasan and N Dhamotharan; compiled by Affan Abdul Kadar)