Written by: Express News Service
3 min readChennaiJun 4, 2011 01:15 AM IST
First published on: Jun 4, 2011 at 01:15 AM IST
J Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK government in Tamil Nadu Friday decided to scrap pet projects of its predecessor and instead initiated probe into allegations of irregularities by the erstwhile DMK government in construction of Rs 1,200-crore assembly-cum-secretariat complex.
From dumping of a housing project and insurance scheme to scrapping plans to revive the Upper House and uniform school education system syllabus,the Jayalalithaa government also decided to build a mono rail system instead of the multi-crore metro rail project that is under way.
The government decisions were announced on the floor of the House during the governors address.
There have been allegations of excess and wasteful expenditure and deficiency in the standards of construction of new secretariat building. Therefore,a Commission of Inquiry headed by a retired judge of the high court will be constituted to inquire into the alleged irregularities like excess expenditure,inordinate delay and deficiency in standards of construction, Governor Surjit Singh Barnala said in his address.
The work on new assembly-cum-secretariat complex, a pet project of former chief minister M Karunanidhi,has been stopped to facilitate the enquiry.
The state government has also decided not to go ahead with plans to revive the Legislative Council.
As the Legislative Council in the state was found to be redundant,it was abolished on November 1,1986 by Puratchi Thalaivar MGR. Therefore,this government is not in favour of constituting the Legislative Council once again, the governor said.
Charging the DMK government with many shortcomings on the rural housing scheme,the government has discontinued it and instead announced a Solar Powered Green House Scheme with enhanced financial aid.
The Kalaignar Insurance Scheme for Life-Saving Treatments also got the boot and will now be replaced by a new public insurance scheme to be launched soon.
The government has also decided to implement a mono rail project in Chennai,stating that the on-going Rs 15,000 crore metro rail project was cost-intensive and would take considerable time for completion. As against the 45 kilometres coverage of the metro,the proposed mono rail will cover 111 kilometres in the first phase and 300 kilometres eventually.
It also resolved to unify the Anna Universities into onethe DMK government had split the Anna University,Chennai,into five.
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