Chennai: Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Friday wrote to her Uttarakhand counterpart Harish Rawat thanking him for taking steps to install the Thiruvalluvar statue within the government Mela Bhavan in Haridwar.
“I am grateful that you have responded speedily and positively to the outpouring of sentiments of the people of TN on this sensitive issue", she told Rawat, who had dispatched a senior Tamil IAS officer in Uttarkhand to identify a suitable spot for the statue's installation. “The chief minister wants the process of the statue's installation to be expedited. I am going to Haridwar today to identify a suitable site where the statue could be installed at the earliest,” vice-chairman R. Meenakshi Sundaram of the Mussoorie-Dehradun Development Authority was quoted saying by the PTI.
Ms Jayalalithaa in her letter told Rawat that the Thiruvalluvar statue issue had caused “considerable disquiet” in TN. Several political leaders in TN had expressed concern over the statue of the poet-saint lying wrapped in a park in Haridwar after the efforts by BJP MP Tarun Vijay to install it on the banks of Ganga failed due to protest from local sadhus.
It appeared that the sadhus were against the Thiruvalluvar statue being erected in an area where only the statues of Hindu deities have been installed. They feared it would set an unwelcome precedent and other groups and sects might come up with similar demands for statues for their own gurus and religious leaders.
According to Meenakshi Sundaram, a suitable spot inside the Mela Bhavan will be decided after consulting the Ganga Sabha and the Akhil Bharatiya Akahara Parishad representatives, and building a pedestal for the statue. Chief Minister Rawat and Governor K.K. Paul would jointly unveil Tiruvalluvar’s statue,
he said.
