An executive engineer of the Chennai Corporation was beaten up and heckled by Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) party cadres on Sunday after he tried to remove illegal banners and posters placed by them.
MDMK members had reportedly put several banners welcoming Rajya Sabha MP and party’s general secretary Vaiko near YMCA grounds at the Todd Hunter road in Chennai.
Vaiko was scheduled to visit Chennai to addressed a gathering on the occasion of CN Annadurai’s birth anniversary.
As reported by India Today, after the corporation received complaints about the placement of illegal banners near the ground, the executive engineer K Varadarajan and other staffers reached the spot to remove the political banners and posters. However, MDMK workers arrived there in their cars and allegedly started attacking Varadarajan and his driver.
Varadarajan has received injuries and is undergoing treatment in a private hospital.
MDMK general secretary Vaiko defended the party cadres’ reckless action by saying that the hoardings were not in public area but inside the venue of the meeting. However, the Saidapet police on Monday registered a case against P Subramani, MDMK district secretary, under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, and arrested him. Police are on the lookout for the others.
The city corporation has removed 4000 illegal banners across the city since last week. Moreover, cases have also been registered against 245 people for erecting illegal flex banners. This action has been taken following the public outrage after an illegal hoarding recently claimed the life of a 23-year-old techie Subhasri in Chennai.
Subhasri Ravi, a 23-year-old software engineer, was crushed to death on September 12 (Thursday)by a water tanker at Pallikarnai in Chennai. Subhasri, who was on her way back home from work, was thrown off her scooter after an illegal hoarding erected on the road’s divider fell on her following which she lost her balance and was hit by a water tanker.
The illegal hoarding was reportedly erected as part of wedding celebrations of an AIADMK functionary’s son on the Pallavaram-Thoraipakam radial road.
AIADMK functionary C Jayagopal was subsequently booked under the Section 4 of The Tamil Nadu Open Places (Prevention of Disfigurement) Act, 1959 for installing the hoarding without permission, after an assistant engineer of the Chennai corporation registered a complaint about the same.
The Chennai corporation had earlier filed a case under Section 326 of the Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919.
Moreover, facing flak over the death of the woman techie, the Chennai Corporation on September 14 (Saturday) decided that patrol vehicles would be deployed to dismantle such hoardings in all the zones. The licences of firms that print illegal banners or hoardings would be cancelled and their manufacturing units sealed, the corporation added.
