Vaigaichelvan, the 46-year-old School Education Minister of Tamil Nadu, was about to get into his official car to rush to MCC Higher Secondary School on Thursday to honour winners of the Teachers’ Day Award, when his mobile phone rang. Those who were near him said they saw blood draining out of the Minister’s face and he rushed to the bedroom. One of the hangers on came out of the house and asked the driver of the office car to go back to the Secretariat and wait for further orders.
Vaigaichelvan, who was sworn in as the School Education Minister in early February has been dropped and P Palaniappan, Minister for Higher Education has been asked to hold additional charges till further orders. It was Palaniappan, who presided over the Teachers’ Day function organised by the State Government at MCC Higher Secondary School and honoured the award winners.
Scribes present at the venue did not ask any questions to Palaniappan for the sudden change of roles.
The communique issued from Raj Bhavan just mentioned that Vaigaichelvan was being dropped from the Council of Ministers and his portfolio has been reallocated to Palaniappan.
This is the 10th reshuffle of the Tamil Nadu Cabinet led by J Jayalalithaa since she came to power in May 2011. Though it is an open secret that there is no job security in the case of Ministers and bureaucrats in the Jayalalithaa Government, the fact is that the Chief Minister has zero-tolerance for corruption. Nobody did notice seriously a submission made by officials of the State School Education Department on Tuesday to the Madurai Bench of the Madras
High Court that they were forced to make several appointments to the posts of watchman and sweepers in Madurai district on the recommendations of MlAs, Ministers and district secretaries of the ruling party.
The submission was in reply to a notice issued by the court following a petition filed by K Ganeshan (38), a physically challenged person who had applied for the post of a watchman though three per cent of the posts were reserved for people with disabilities. Ganeshan, through the Right to Information (RTI) Act had collected details about how each of the candidates was recruited.
The education department officials said that six of the eight appointments for the post of watchmen were made on recommendations of MlAs, Ministers and the Madurai district secretary of the AIADMK.