Pennycuick residence not be demolished for Karunanidhi memorial: Stalin

Tamil Nadu government does not have any plans to demolish the Madurai building where the Mullaperiyar dam's architect, Colonel John Pennycuick, had stayed, for erecting the proposed Kalaignar Karunanidhi memorial library, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin told the Assembly on Wednesday.

Responding to AIADMK member Sellur K. Raju who claimed that the state government has decided to demolish the place where Pennycuick had stayed for constructing the Kalaignar memorial library, Stalin said that an erroneous campaign has been carried out on this and added that this has now reached the assembly.

"The PWD Minister has already clarified on this in the Assembly. If there is any basis for this allegation, we are ready to change it. I am making this statement because wrong information should not be recorded in the Assembly."

Noting that Raju had been a two-time minister and was elected to the Assembly three times, he said that such a baseless allegation would not do justice to his standing in the house.

AIADMK leaders and former Chief Ministers K. Palaniswami and O. Panneerselvam had earlier said that the move to demolish the Pennycuick memorial was nothing but an attempt to erase history and had urged the DMK government to rethink the proposal.

The leaders, in a joint public statement on August 2, said: "We urge the Tamil Nadu government to set up the Kalaignar Library in a place where there are no objections." The leaders had said that Col Pennycuick had even contributed his personal funds towards the construction of Mulllaperiyar dam which has been a source of livelihood for the people in southern Tamil Nadu.-IANS