Greater Chennai Corporation

According to the web site of the Greater Chennai Corporation, it is “headed by Mayor, who presides over 200 councillors, each of whom represents one of the 200 wards of the city.” The point is, where are they? The term of the last Council and, concurrently, that of the Mayor, expired in October 2016. Ever since, we have been administered by the Commissioner, in his capacity as a Special Officer. It is, therefore, more than a year since we have had elected representatives to handle civic issues. Not many in the city appear to be bothered, but in the long…

For months now, motorists have been having a roller coaster ride on Thiruvengadam Lane in Perambur. The road was resurfaced with concrete sometime in early 2016. Then, it was the turn of TANGEDCO to dig up the road in September 2017, to lay a new power cable to connect one transformer to another. Upon inquiring why the road was being dug up within a span of months, we were informed that a new electric cable needs to be laid and this work could be done only after the sanctions were in place. It’s been months and the dug up road…

Several months ago, as I travelled by suburban train passing under the Kodambakkam Road-Over-Bridge, I noticed something amiss about the footsteps on one side of the bridge. There were no handrails to prevent accidental fall from a height, a definite threat to users. Presuming that it was under construction, I kept a watch over it whenever I travelled by train. On the morning of October 23, 2016, I paid a visit to the bridge by road from my residence at West Mambalam, merely out of curiosity. Strangely, the bridge appeared to have been completed nicely with granite steps of good…

Not a civil servant. Not a Councillor. Not a full-time activist. Just another Chennaiite, like any of us. While most of his age prefer to spend time with family, go on vacations and concentrate on personal and professional goals, 50-year-old C R Balaji clicks pictures of badly laid roads and illegally dumped garbage during his commute to and from work and reports it to the appropriate government authorities. If you are a resident of Mylapore, you cannot miss this tall, middle-aged man going around on his bike taking pictures to highlight the various civic issues in the neighbourhood. And his…

On a sunny afternoon in October, a herd of cattle nonchalantly crossed the Grand Southern Trunk Road at Alandur, posing a significant danger to the speeding vehicles on this highway. Diversions and minor collisions among bikers held up traffic here for about ten minutes. A few weeks later, a similar situation was witnessed on Jawaharlal Nehru Road in Koyambedu, where a rider fell as he tried to steer his vehicle away due to the sudden appearance of some cows on the road. The situation is similar in most suburbs, where stray cattle literally rest in the middle of the roads…

I remember the day well. Several of us had received a Whatsapp message asking us to participate in a silent protest on Besant Nagar beach on February 26, 2017.  The message said the protest idea had been mooted by a group of women. I remember thinking to myself – Who are these women? Are they really going to do something? Maybe the message is a hoax... And I did not go. I wish I had gone to Besant Nagar beach that day. I would have witnessed the birth of an all-women initiative that calls itself VoiceOfPeople. No leader, no followers,…

A few days ago, I read on an online news website, that the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) was planning to make source segregation of waste mandatory for all residents, beginning October 2, 2017. If this was true, it was music to the ears of citizens like me – segregation maniacs that have been trying to get their family members, neighbours etc to segregate household waste at source – but with very limited success. Chennai reportedly generates the highest per capita garbage among the large metros in India – 750 gms per person per day, and we send about 5000 tons…

In January this year, the organising committee members of Urur Kuppam and Alcot Kuppam, had planned to host a Carnatic music concert and a Chennai Corporation Band performance on Besant Nagar beach during the Marghazhi Festival. Little did they suspect that organising these events would lead to a protracted tussle with the government for the next six months. Applying for permission The two concerts were scheduled for January 29th and February 4th at the Besant Nagar beach. The committee members approached the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) for the necessary permission. But after making several visits to the offices of the…

The Corporation of Greater Chennai falls back on certain repeat activities whenever it finds time hanging heavy on its hands. One is the beautification of the Marina and the other is the renaming of roads that commemorate the colonial masters. The latest to suffer from this are Montieth and Fraser’s Bridge Roads, which are to now become Red Cross and Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission Roads respectively. William Montieth entered the Madras Engineers in 1809, became Lt Col in 1826 and Lt Gen in 1854. Fraser’s Bridge gets its name from John Fraser who designed the municipal waterworks. Not undistinguished…

It has been a year since Dr D Karthikeyan took charge as the Commissioner of Greater Chennai Corporation. Within a few months of him taking charge as the commissioner, he was accorded the additional responsibility of holding the Special Officer’s post in the absence of a council which ended its term last October. GCC is not new to Karthikeyan. It is for the third time that he is serving as the Commissioner of the Greater Chennai Corporation. In a quick chat with Citizen Matters, the Corporation Commissioner speaks about some of the significant issues bothering the city. Excerpts from the…