Karunanidhi Memorial at Marina Beach: Cash Crunch, Ecological Impacts not Considered

In the ongoing Tamil Nadu budget session, Chief Minister MK Stalin announced the construction of a memorial for late DMK leader and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi at a cost of Rs 39 crores from the state exchequer. The decision was accepted unanimously by MLAs from across political parties, including the opposition party AIADMK and its allies PMK and BJP.

When Karunanidhi passed away in August 2018, the then Tamil Nadu government led by AIADMK’s Edapaddi K Palaniswami, however, rejected the DMK’s request for permission to bury him at the Marina Beach. Palaniswami mentioned “several pending cases in the Madras high court and legal complications” and refused to give a place alongside the memorial of former chief minister C N Annadurai.

It was only after a case filed in the Madras High Court was passed in favour of DMK that Karunanidhi was buried at the Marina Beach.

Hence,, the AIADMK “wholeheartedly and unanimously” welcoming the “historic announcement”, as AIADMK coordinator and deputy leader of opposition O Panneerselvam said, comes as a big surprise. Especially because this bonhomie comes after the AIADMK walked out of the assembly several times in the present budget session over other agendas.

REASONS BEHIND OPPOSING CONSTRUCTION OF MEMORIALS

The AIADMK and the DMK have made use of every opportunity to pull down each other’s plans for setting up memorials for their respective leaders at the Marina beach.

In December 2016, when the ruling Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa passed away, the then AIADMK government buried her mortal remains next to her political mentor MG Ramachandran or MGR at the Marina beach. MK Stalin pointed out that the memorial is for a person convicted in a disproportionate assets case and he sought to know if it was fair to open the memorial when her death still remained a mystery.

Upon making the decision to construct a memorial for Jayalalithaa, Palaniswami had said that while it was fine to bury leaders such as Annadurai, Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa on the Marina beach, construction of memorials should stop with the Phoenix (name of the Jayalalithaa memorial). “Imagine the situation, after a hundred years, if there are a hundred memorials, then the beach will lose its charm,” he said. He was later seen rejecting the plea for a memorial for Karunanidhi.

Although the BJP assembly party welcomed the Jayalalithaa memorial, other leaders, including H Raja, opposed it. BJP youth wing submitted a petition to Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit demanding that Jayalalithaa’s memorial not be constructed on the Marina beach. It said that it was unnecessary to construct a memorial for someone charged with corruption, and argued that the state was already facing a cash crunch.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the state is facing a worse cash crunch, and yet, yet all the political parties have favoured the construction of the Karunanidhi memorial at Rs 39 crores. The Jayalalithaa memorial was constructed at a cost of Rs 50 crores.

ECOLOGICAL IMPACT TAKES BACKSEAT

Both the memorials circumvent the rule that say that there cannot be any construction within 500 metres from the waterfront along the beach. The Jayalalithaa Memorial occupies 8.25 acres in the Marina Beach and Karunianidha’s memorial will come up on 2.21 acres of land.

Environmental activist Nithyanand Jayaraman said, “What applies to Jayalalithaa applies to Karunanidhi as well... The government’s decision tells people that you don’t have to care about climate change and sea level rise. It is just like Modiji not wearing a mask during the election campaign. The leaders should be setting an example.”

“The issue here is that leaders don’t seem to have any grasp of what science is telling us. Two weeks after IPCC reported that 8 cities in India would go under water due to sea level rise, they are deciding to set up a memorial right next to the sea. The point of a memorial is that you want it to last a long time, having it next to the sea is the worst place” he added.

He also said a bad precedent is being set by the leaders, because “on the one hand fishermen are not allowed to expand their houses and successive governments have evicted them. But then memorials are erected along the coastline”. “Is the coast affected only by the fisherfolk’s housing?” he asked.

Jayaraman also pointed out that while the state sets aside Rs 400 crore for climate change mission, which is good, it contrarily goes and sets up a memorial on the coastline.