Late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s memorial will finally be open to the public on January 27. The grand memorial on the Marina Beach front has been 30 months in the making. It will be inaugurated by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam.
On Tuesday, EPS inspected the final touches on the memorial, which has also includes memorial of AIADMK founder and former CM MG Ramachandran MGR’s memorial on the nine-acre land. The inauguration will be attended by the assembly speaker P Dhanapal, deputy speaker V Jayaraman, Ministers, MLAs, MPs and other dignitaries.
Made at a cost of Rs 79.75 crore, Jayalalithaa’s memorial is shaped like a Phoenix with lions standing guard on either side. A statue of Jayalalithaa and MGR along with an artificial waterfall will welcome guests at the entrance to the memorial.
The foundation stone of the project was laid back in May 2018 and it was expected to be completed within a year, as the cabinet had given the go ahead to build the memorial immediately after her death in December 2016. Back then, the opposition including the DMK, the AIADMK, the PMK and others had opposed the memorial, stating that the late chief minister had allegations of disproportionate assets against her.
The grand event will also coincide with another big development in the state. On January 27, Jayalalithaa’s close aide, VK Sasikala will be released from the Parappana Agrahara prison in Bengaluru and will return to Chennai after four years in prison.
In April 2019, the Supreme Court had declined to consider a plea against the construction of the memorial for Jayalalithaa. A bench comprising former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna asked the petitioner if the top court was required to go into all these issues.
The plea came to the Supreme Court after the Madras high court dismissed Ravi’s plea against the former chief minister’s memorial back in January 2019. In the plea, the petitioner argued that Jayalalithaa was a convict in the disproportionate assets case.
However the court clarified that Jayalalithaa was not a convict as she had passed away before the apex court could rule on the case, forcing abatement of the proceedings