Chennai: Amid rumours about the deteriorating condition of AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s health, shops and business establishment across the city downed their shutters on Monday evening.
The rumours triggered panic buying of essentials such as milk, vegetables and motorists queued up in front of the petrol bunks to fill up on fuel for vehicles.
With health bulletin and twitter updates by Apollo hospital started indicating deteriorating health condition of Jayalalithaa, who had suffered a cardiac arrest on Sunday evening, schools and offices closed early to enable students and office goers return home safely.
Fearing that shops would be shut for some days in the event of Jayalalithaa’s death, B. Padma, homemaker, in T Nagar, bought vegetables for the next three days.
“During last year’s flood when normal life was out of gear we were helpless. Buying milk, candles and essential commodities turned out to be extremely difficult then. When my friend forwarded the information about Jayalalithaa’s critical health condition and warned me on its impact through WhatsApp, the first thing I did was to stock vegetables and groceries,” she said.
When G. Sheela, a homemaker, and resident of Saidapet, rushed to the nearest grocery shop in the evening, there were hardly any vegetables left for her to pick up and all the shops in the vicinity ran out of milk stock.
“Even as I was buying vegetables, the shopkeeper started downing shutters as some news channel started flashing the news of CM’s demise,” she added. A. Joseph, a resident of T Nagar accused vegetable vendors of fleecing the public. “A kg of tomato costing Rs 20 today morning was being sold at Rs 80 after the shops started shutting down. All vegetable prices were hiked. Even a half litre of milk is being sold at '50 and above,” he said.
Long queues of vehicles were seen at petrol bunks with motorists wanted to fill up vehicle’s tanks. “I don’t know whether the petrol bunks will remain open tomorrow or other vehicles ply. So I want to fill up my car tank,” said S. Pandiarajan, an employee of a private company, who was waiting in front of a petrol bunk in Inner Ring Road.
