CHENNAI: Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay will be shifting his office from the iconic colonial-era building that most people associate with the seat of the Tamil Nadu government to the Namakkal Kavignar Maaligai, the 10-storeyed tower built in 1975, located within the Fort St George complex. Vijay is the first CM to shift his office from the heritage building.
Measuring works have already started on the 10th floor to house the new Chief Minister’s Office.
A senior official told TNIE that the CM is tentatively scheduled to shift his office in mid-August (during the Tamil month Aani). Asked whether this decision is made due to astrological reasons, the official denied it, saying it is being done for administrative convenience.
Currently, the 10th floor accommodates a large hall where annual collectors’ meetings and important meetings of a larger number of officials are taking place. Apart from this, part of the Information Department, Home Department, and Commercial Taxes Department are also functioning on this floor. They have been informed about the shifting of the CM’s office there.
“There is no place for relocating these offices anywhere else in the main building or in the Namakkal Kavignar Maaligai,” said Tamil Nadu Secretariat Association (TANSA) president G Vengadesan, adding that if the government insists on their relocation, the association would protest.
When asked about this, an official told TNIE that there are plans to relocate them to places equipped with functional meeting halls without putting them to any hardship. However, a final decision is yet to be arrived at.
When asked whether the shifting of the CM’s office will disturb the regular movement of staff and the public who wish to meet the officials, a senior employee said, “We guess the CM will be allocated a separate lift to the 10th floor. So, there won’t be much disturbance to the employees. But certainly security will be beefed up around the entire building once the CM shifts to the 10th floor.”
Time and again, the TANSA has been urging the government to shift the state secretariat to another spacious place, citing unprecedented space constraints for the employees and visitors and also considering the safety aspects of the centuries-old building, which is under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India.
Two years ago, ‘air cracks’ in the tiles fixed on the first floor in Namakkal Kavignar Maaligai raised apprehensions about the stability of the 50-year-old building. However, the then PWD minister E V Velu asked engineers to check the entire building, and asserted that the stability of the building was perfect. At that time, the TANSA demanded shifting the secretariat to the Omandurar Government Estate or establishing a new secretariat on the Madras Race Club premises.
Former chief minister J Jayalalithaa in 2002 attempted to establish a 2,000-acre administrative city near Mamallapuram. But that proposal was dropped. Later, during 2003, she attempted to build a new secretariat in Queen Mary’s College on the beachfront and in Kotturpuram. In 2010, the then chief minister M Karunanidhi built a secretariat complex in Omandurar Government Estate, but when Jayalalithaa returned to power in 2011, the CM turned it into a super-speciality hospital.
