Jayalalithaa wants statue of Saint Thiruvalluvar to be installed in Uttarakhand
Chennai: With the statue of Saint Thiruvalluvar lying in an abandoned state at a guest house in Haridwar, Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa on Wednesday dashed off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention in the installation of the bust at an “appropriate place” in the holy town in Uttarakhand.
Contending that the visuals of Thiruvalluvar statue in an abandoned condition beamed on television channels have caused an “outrage” in Tamil Nadu, the Chief Minister wanted immediate intervention of the Prime Minister's office in ensuring that the Uttarakhand Government treats the bust with “due respect.”
“I request you to kindly take up this matter with the Government of Uttarakhand urgently and to ensure that the statue of Thiruvalluvar is treated with due respect and is installed at an appropriate location at the earliest. Failure to do so would lead to the whole objective of the project to install the statue of Thiruvalluvar in a pilgrim centre in Northern India being completely defeated. I request you to kindly accord this issue the highest priority and prevail upon the Government of Uttarakhand to resolve the matter at the earliest,” she said in the letter.
Ms Jayalalithaa’s letter came days after a massive outrage in Tamil Nadu over the state of the statue of Tiruvalluvar, which was unveiled at a makeshift camp at the Dam Kothi guest house in Haridwar after sadhus protested against its installation at the Sankaracharya Chowk. Writers, Tamil lovers and politicians had demanded that the Union and Uttarakhand Governments take steps to install the statue at an appropriate place.
In the letter, Ms Jayalalithaa also recalled the efforts madeby former BJP MP Tarun Vijay to install the statue on the banks of river Ganga and her gesture of nominating two ministers of her cabinet when the “Tiruvalluvar Ganga Payanam” reached Chennai on June 22.
“The object of the Tiruvalluvar Ganga Payanam is to show solidarity of the North with the Tamil saint poet Tiruvalluvar’s message of equality and ending social discrimination in society,” she said.
After protests and accusations that the Uttarakhand Government did not handle the issue properly, chief minister Harish Rawat had said late Tuesday night that the statue will be installed at the Kumbh Mela area within a week. He had made this assurance to representatives of various Tamil Sangams of north India who met him demanding urgent action in the matter.
