In their long war with the Coimbatore Corporation for transparency, activists have won a battle.
The victory came in with the Corporation uploading resolutions of nine Council meetings it had held from July 2017 to January 2018. And, this victory came with the Raja Gopal Sunkara assuming office as Corporation Commissioner.
Civic activist S.P. Thiyagarajan, who had been waging the war along with a few others, said a few days after Mr. Sunkara assumed office, he had sent a message asking for the Council resolutions to be uploaded on the Corporation’s website – something that the civic had been doing for ages and had given up in June 2017.
After unsuccessful attempts in asking the Corporation to upload the resolutions, he had moved the Tamilnadu Urban Local Bodies Ombudsman, which in August 2018 had ordered the civic body to post online all the resolutions it passed thus far.
As the Corporation failed to implement the Ombudsman order, Mr. Thiyagarajan had moved the Madras High Court, where the case was pending.
At this stage, based on his petition, the Corporation had posted online resolutions of nine Council meetings but it was not enough, he said and added that the Corporation should also post the resolutions the Council had passed under Special Officers in 2018, 2019 and 2020, for that was the period when the Corporation had several resolutions for executing works worth several crores of rupees under Smart Cities Mission and other Central Government schemes, he also said.
And added: the very reluctance to post the resolutions only strengthened suspicion that the Corporation had reasons to conceal its decisions.
Consumer activist K. Kathirmathiyon said though a welcome beginning, it was disheartening to note that the Corporation was not parting with the people the information that was rightfully theirs. Without wasting any more time, the new Commissioner should fully disclose all information, he demanded.
