Anticipating trouble, the World Tamil Confederation Trust, which is overseeing the construction of the memorial coming up on a 1.75-acre plot, quietly went ahead with the inauguration ceremony in the presence of some Tamil leaders on Wednesday, two days ahead of schedule.
The Mullivaikkal memorial as it is called, is now caught in a political tug-of-war between the state and the Trust headed by LTTE-supporter Pazha Nedumaran. While the memorial and the three-day get-together might create some ripples among pro-Eelam supporters, the state government is bound to view this as muscle-flexing by pro-LTTE groups in Tamil Nadu and a possible glorification of its leaders and cadres.
On Wednesday morning in Madurai, superintendent of police of Thanjavur district G Dharmaraj approached a division bench of justices M Jaichandren and S Vaidyanathan, seeking permission to file an appeal against the single judge's order. In the afternoon, advocate general A L Somayaji appeared before the division bench and stated that the police were not given sufficient time to make a representation.
The bench raised concern over the issue by stating, "Yesterday (Tuesday) the single judge passed an order granting permission to the function and two petitions which challenged the function were dismissed by this same division bench". However, the bench gave permission to the police to file the appeal on Wednesday afternoon after they received the order of the single bench. The police are likely to file the appeal on Thursday.
Pazha Nedumaran told TOI, "The memorial has now been inaugurated, and no one can stop the three-day inaugural function anymore." Condemning the 'attitude of the authorities' in the strongest terms, he said, "Though the memorial is inaugurated today, two days ahead of schedule, the three-day conference will go ahead as planned on Friday". He said central intelligence agencies were working towards stopping the inauguration. "Some state intelligence personnel came to the venue and intimidated our workers. We heard that they even threatened to demolish the structure," he said.
On the backstage of the whole controversy is M Natarajan, husband of chief minister J Jayalalithaa's confidante Sasikalaa, who has donated a portion of the land for the memorial. Nedumaran's rush to inaugurate the memorial ahead of schedule was apparently precipitated by resolutions passed at the Vilar village panchayat on Wednesday. One of the resolutions said the controversial memorial had encroached upon the highway, and since a public meeting with foreign dignitaries was being planned, it would create divisions in the local panchayat and posed a potential threat to peace in the locality.
P Maniarasan of Tamil Desa Pothuvudai Katchi who attended the inauguration on Wednesday said the State government's move to vacate the single judge's order through the resolutions at the village level was against the spirit of democracy.
The sprawling memorial has been raised to honour the memory of the people who died in Mullivaikkal in the northern Tamil area of Sri Lanka in the last phase of the ethnic war in May, 2009.
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