Actor and Makkal Needhi Maiam leader Kamal Haasan on Monday submitted a memorandum to the Coimbatore District Collector urging to resume the Grama Sabha meetings. Haasan, who is on a two-day visit to Coimbatore to thank the people for voting him in the recently concluded Assembly elections, met Collector GS Sameeran and placed several demands which included notifying the people about the Grama Sabha meetings seven days before they are held. He also demanded that the government should provide a separate annexure for Grama Sabha in the budget. “After January 2020, Grama Sabha meetings were not held. Our demand is to resume them. We submitted a memorandum to the District Collector and he has assured to initiate steps towards it. We are hopeful it will happen soon,” Haasan told reporters here. He also said that the budget report, bank account books, audit books and other important documents of the village council should be kept for public view. The demands of the people should be duly recorded as resolutions and the copy of the resolutions, which were passed in the council, should be kept for public view, he added. “Awareness should be made about Grama Sabha meetings. These meetings should be documented through photos and videos. Members of the Grama Sabha should be allowed to record the proceedings,” Haasan said. He further added that as a step to ensure that Grama Sabha meetings are held in all the hamlets in the villages under each panchayat, they should be conducted on a rotational basis. After meeting the Collector, Haasan spoke with a couple of his party functionaries and briefed them upon the future path. While commenting on the people who left the party, Haasan said it was not a shock to him as he already knew about their plans two years ago. Haasan, who contested from Coimbatore (South) in the 2021 Assembly elections, lost to BJP candidate Vanathi Srinivasan by a slender margin of 1,728 votes. His party MNM bagged less than three per cent vote share in the polls. A few months post the election, an exodus of MNM functionaries quit the party. Former MNM vice-president R Mahendran, who recently joined DMK, had said that Haasan was being manipulated by outside forces and there was no democracy within the party.
