Poes Garden residents dead against Jayalalithaa memorial

Chennai: Even as cases are pending before the Madras High Court challenging the government decision to convert Jayalalithaa's Poes Garden bungalow into a memorial for the late leader, a public hearing held on Saturday to gather the views from the local residents has added to the AIADMK regime's embarrassment. Almost all of those who spoke at the gathering stoutly opposed the memorial proposal even as they insisted they have lots of love and respect for Jayalalithaa.

Social activist 'Traffic' Ramaswamy has filed a petition in the Madras High Court sometime back seeking halt of the government proposal to create a memorial for Jayalalithaa in her Poes Garden bungalow. He has contended that the government should not waste public money to put up a memorial for someone involved in big-time corruption while in power.

Jayalalithaa's niece Deepa too has moved the High Court against the memorial proposal, albeit for a different reason. Her case is that she, and her brother Deepak, are the legal heirs of Jayalalithaa and they must be consulted before the government decides to do anything with her aunt's properties. 

While these two cases are still before the High Court, the government has now decided to go ahead with implementing the announcement made by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on August 17, 2017, that Amma's house would be made a memorial for people to visit. The government, at the same time, desired to lend ears to the public sentiment on the proposal as many in Poes Garden and elsewhere in the city had voiced strong opposition to it.

Accordingly, the Chennai district collector has enlisted the services of the Madras School of Social Work to conduct public hearings and report on the citizens' views regarding the memorial proposal. The first meeting was held at a community hall at Teynampet on Saturday. 

"We all opposed the memorial proposal. As many as 110 petitions were given against it at the hearing today", said V Balasubramanian, a resident of Poes Garden. "I am now 80 years old and have been leading a peaceful life here since 1960. I am certain that will not be the case if they make Veda Nilayam (Jaya's house) into a memorial", he told DC.

He said the petitions from the residents who attended the public hearing and also the oral representations, detailed how the memorial proposal was "most untenable" because it would bring in huge number of people and vehicles into the area that's full of narrow and blind streets that cannot withstand big traffic. "Shops will come up by the roadside and the large crowd of outsiders will bring with them problems of littering and crime", said the worried senior citizen.

"We are already suffering from terrible water crunch and this memorial proposal would make things immensely worse. Entire Poes Garden will become unsafe, unclean and peace would be lost forever", he said.

Another Poes resident said while the locals have "lots of love and respect" for Jayalalithaa and grieved her death "as the loss of someone within our family", they all now feared that the peace and safe environment that she had ensured during her lifetime would not be available to them when her house got converted into a memorial, a kind of public museum.

"They could have a memorial for Jayalalithaa at some other place in Chennai, where the people would be able to visit in their vehicles without hindrance and without causing hindrance. Why here in Poes Garden?" asked a woman in anguish.

The second public hearing will be heard at another venue on Monday, December 10, after which the MSSW will present its report to the Chennai Collector, who in turn will send the draft on the public hearings and allied issued to the government to take the final call on the controversial memorial proposal. But then, the cases filed by Traffic and Deepa are still there in the Madras High Court.