Kerala’s Capital Thiruvananthapuram witnessed a hitherto unseen and unheard of agitation on Monday as the BJP councillors of the city municipal corporation staged a unique kind of protest against the callousness of the State Government and the CPI (M) which is ruling the local body.
All the 35 councillors belonging to the BJP took to the street on Monday morning and started repairing the ring roads and thoroughfares which have been dug by the municipal corporation and remained unattended to since 2017.
“Our priority was to fill the potholes in the roads that lead to the three major Government schools in the city as these roads have been flooded in the pre-Monsoon rains. Children commuting in these stretches are sure to fall in this water filled potholes and it is their parents who stand to lose,” said veteran councilor P Ashok Kumar, who led the repairing works. Though by noon, the councillors succeeded in filling the potholes and made them motorable, the police arrested all the councillors for causing public nuisance and took them all to the Armed Police Reserve Camp in the city.
Roads in Thiruvananthapuram, one of the oldest municipal corporations in Kerala (formed in 1942), are in a pathetic state and are crying for renovation and maintenance. The corporation, which boasts of the youngest Mayor in the country, has not done anything to repair or renovate the roads. Arya Rajendran, the Mayor, has courted controversies after controversies and right now she is busy fighting a legal battle with the driver of a KSRTC bus whom she alleges that he shown obscene signal with his fingers.
“The State Government as well as the rulers of the corporation are least bothered about the state of roads under their jurisdiction. The CPI (M) is busy appointing party cadres as staff of various departments in the corporation while the city is crying for attention,” said a lady councillor belonging to the BJP.Ashok Kumar, a teacher by profession, said that he and others like him consider politics as a means for the welfare of the people irrespective of political differences. “But we alone cannot make things happen unless the ruling dispensation take the leadership,” he said.
‘Passing the buck’ is the easy way out for the four-time member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor. “These are all the responsibilities of the local self-Government and State administration. The MP is busy with national and global affairs,” said an associate of Tharoor. The MLAs representing the corporation limits too sounded equally indifferent to the plight of the people.