Vijay Celebrates Children's Day, Distributes Cakes, Brings Smiles to Kids
This is the first Children's Day event being celebrated by Vijay after he became chief minister in May
Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay celebrated Children's Day by distributing cakes to school children at Kolathur here on Friday, bringing smiles to the young faces.
Clad in a silk shirt and dhoti, the chief minister arrived at the Madumanagar Chennai Corporation Middle School, Kolathur, and personally distributed a cake and greeting card as well to the children in their classrooms, thus marking the launch of the statewide programme.
This is the first Children's Day event being celebrated by Vijay after he became chief minister in May. Incidentally, this is also the first time the state government is distributing cakes to school children on the occasion.
To mark Children's Day, which is officially observed on November 14, the state government organised special events in government and aided schools today and distributed 45-gram cakes along with greeting cards to students across the state.
At the Kolathur event, the beaming children stood up, one after the other at their respective places in the classrooms, and received the gift from the CM, responding with "thank you sir."
Vijay, after personally distributing the cakes, lifted a boy, fed him a piece of the cake and asked if he enjoyed it. The shy kid twirled his little fingers around the talisman around his neck, adorably broke into a grin and nodded his head in appreciation. Vijay then placed him down and interacted with other children. The video of the CM lifting the boy and asking him a couple of questions went viral on social media platforms.
The chief minister initially distributed cakes to students from classes 1 to 5, and later to the students of other classes.
The greeting cards provided to the students featured the message "All is well, be confident," along with Children's Day wishes from the CM.
The event was wrapped up by a cultural programme by the students.
Earlier, Vijay made a surprise visit to his Perambur Assembly constituency (MLA) office and received petitions from scores of people who had gathered outside the office.
Also, he undertook a surprise inspection of a government school's nutrition centre and personally tasted the food being prepared for the students to ensure its quality and nutritional standards were maintained.
Approximately 61.8 lakh students studying in government and aided schools across Tamil Nadu received cakes as part of the Children’s Day celebrations. The state government had sanctioned Rs 9.27 crore to distribute cakes and greeting cards, signed by the CM, to 61,84,566 students across primary, middle, high, and higher secondary schools, the government said.
To ensure seamless supply, the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation (TNCSC) floated tenders and procured the cakes from four major manufacturers. Chief Educational Officers, District Educational Officers, and Block Educational Officers coordinated the dispatch to ensure the cakes reached all schools on time for distribution.
District collectors, district monitoring officers, and special vigilance teams, too, supervised the distribution today.