Legislators belonging to the ruling Congress and its ally, the DMK and the opposition AIADMK on Tuesday caused a flutter at a review meeting chaired by Puducherry Local Administration Department Minister A. Namassivayam to review the progress of works being implemented under the Smart City programme.
As soon as the meeting commenced at the Chief Secretariat, DMK legislator R. Siva and Congress legislator K. Lakshminarayanan sought to know the progress made under the Smart City project. Mr. Siva charged that the project remained only on paper and there was no implementation of any scheme for the last two years while many States, according to him, had made impressive progress under the project.
MLAs A. Anbalagan and A. Baskar (both AIADMK) and T. Djeamourthy (Congress) joined them and took objection to the Chief Secretary Ashwani Kumar who is also the Chairman of Puducherry Smart City Development Limited (PSCDL) being absent at the meeting.
Congress legislator K. Lakshminarayanan contended that it wrong on the part of the authorities to hold the meeting when the Chief Secretary was not present. During his absence, any decisions taken by the meeting would not have any sanction. All the files relating to Smart City were being perused by the Chief Secretary and hence holding the meeting was not proper, he argued.
The MLAs then staged a walkout from the meeting.
Later talking to reporters, Mr. Anbalagan said that the Smart City project had been envisaged at an outlay of ₹2,000 crore and the Centre had already released ₹200 crore. But the Puducherry Government had not released any funds for the project. He said that the government was drawing up a plan to cover the assembly constituencies held by the ruling Congress and ignoring the opposition segments while implementing the projects.