CHENNAI: Eleven years after it was installed by the then DMK Government, the statue of legendary Tamil actor Sivaji Ganesan was moved Thursday in a pre-dawn operation from the Marina Beach to the yet-to-be inaugurated memorial on the banks of Adyar.
Shifting of the statue that was unveiled by the then Chief Minister and the late actor’s childhood friend M. Karunanidhi in July 2016 brings down the curtains on the long arduous battle in the Madras high court where petitions were filed for removal of the statue from Marina Promenade since it affected the line of sight of motorists.
Construction of Sivaji memorial is in the final stage. (Photo: DC)
The high court had ordered the statue to be removed from the location in question and the state government decided to relocate the statue to the memorial being built on the Durgabai Deshmukh Road in Raja Annamalai Puram. More than 50 workers with the help of Chennai Police removed the statue from the Marina in the small hours of Thursday and brought it to the Sivaji Ganesan Memorial on the banks of Adyar. The statue was installed at the memorial by Thursday evening, sources said.
Work on the memorial is on at the 65 cent of land allotted by the Tamil Nadu Government and it will be inaugurated soon, the sources said.
The legal battle began when a social worker P.N. Srinivasan filed a writ petition for the removal of the statue, as it was located in the middle of Kamarajar and Radhakrishnan Salai junction, opposite to Gandhi Statue thus affecting the line of sight of motorists. The battle had also reached the Supreme Court for a brief while when the state government in 2015 challenged the high court order on removal of the statue.
A view of the Kamarajar Salai without the Sivaji Statue. (Photo: DC)
Stating that there was no response from the Government, Nagarajan, son of Srinivasan, filed the contempt petition claiming that the authorities did not take a decision as per the orders of the High Court.
Meanwhile, the then Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa announced on the floor of the State Assembly on May 26, 2016 that a memorial would be built to the legendary actor near Adyar and the statue would be shifted to that memorial.
During 2011-2016 tenure of Jayalalithaa, the traffic police had told the court that the statue indeed caused risk to road users and that a few accidents had occurred due to the location of the statue.
