Chennai: On his last day of tenure at the Chennai corporation, Mayor Saidai S. Duraisamy turned emotional and chose to spend most of his time with school students.
“Study well and develop your civic sense,” was his piece of advice to the Saidapet Maanthopu corporation school students on Monday. He also requested the students to pray for the speedy recovery of hospitalised Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. He then interacted with a few civic activists in T. Nagar and inspected a corporation park.
The sudden inspection and the visit to the corporation school, a public park left the local officials baffled. Interestingly, one of the officials called his superior to check whether, he can accompany the mayor during his inspection, as there was no official communiqué about the event.
Later in the day, Duraisamy spent about an hour at the Ripon Buildings, the city civic headquarters. With a few visitors and majority of the councillors staying away from the mayor’s chamber, Duraisamy spent quality time chit chatting with his office staff and attendants.
“The mayor is usually tensed, behaves strict with the Ripon Building staff, but on his last day, he was emotional and left the head office with teary eyes,” said a security guard at the Ripon Building.
“Personally, I don’t like any politician, but today he (mayor) behaved like a normal person and insisted all of us that his residence will always be open for any help,” a staffer attached to mayor’s office said.
“He is a philanthropist, a good motivator to students, but not a good mayor. Duraisamy would go ahead with his plans and hardly gets opinion from bureaucrats or other elected representatives,” said a Ripon Building official pointing out that several schemes mooted by him like garbage segregation sheds and promotion of transfer of developmental rights for constructions received lukewarm response.
