To understand how the Chennai’s Council functions we have been reading up on the published Council reports- reading questions they asked, speeches they made and the discussions that took place. The second to last meeting of the present Council was held on August 29th, 2011 and we had the chance to attend it, and finally see and hear the people we had been reading about. As we stood at the entrance of the Ripon building, cars pulled up. Men in white and women in silk bustled up the stairs to the Council Chambers.

The meeting was chaired by Mayor Subrahmaniam. The monthly Council meetings are held at the Council Chambers near the Mayor’s office in the Ripon Building. The Mayor sits at the head of the room. To his right sits the Commissioner and on his left the Deputy Mayor. The Councilors sit according to their party. The benches in front of the Mayor are occupied by the ruling party in the city (DMK) on the right and the opposition party (AIADMK) on the left. There are two balconies on either side of the Council chambers; on the left is where the press is seated and on the right the recording equipment is kept. There are scribes who sit near the Mayor and take down the minutes of the meeting. Two scribes work at a time. This is used to compile the Proceedings Report of the Council meeting, which is published and sent to all Councilors.

The Council Secretary sits near the entrance of the Chamber. Councilors sign their attendance at the ledger there and collect the agenda for the meeting from him. The Agenda specifies the questions being asked at the meeting and the resolutions up for discussion. The Council Secretary is the head of the Council Department and is in charge of keeping attendance, preparing the agenda for every meeting and publishing the monthly reports.

The first 15 minutes of this meeting was chaotic as the CPI and the PMK members wanted to raise the issue of the High Court verdict on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The State government had passed a resolution that day where they asked for the death sentence of the 3 convicts to be turned to life imprisonment[1]. This led to loud arguments between the CPI and PMK on one side and the AIADMK on the other. The Mayor called for order and said that the issue was not a Council matter and so will not be discussed. If any one wanted to express their opinion on this issue, it could be done at the Legislative Assembly. At 12:00 p.m. the CPI and the PMK walked out to show their displeasure/staunch disagreement. But they walked back in at 12:15 p.m. A Councilor we talked to opined that the Mayor took such a stance so as to not go against the State government.

The first part of every Council meeting is the question hour. Unfortunately we missed this because we were obtaining permission from the Council Secretary to attend the meeting.

After the question hour, the following people were called upon to address the Council-

Ward No. Name of Councilor
146 Selvi Sounderaraj
11 K.Kripakaran
63 Prabakaran (ABSENT)
61 Mohammed Yasin (ABSENT)
83 Nagarajan
39 P.M.Kalyani
3 P. Jayanti
154 Meenakshi Venkatraman
95 R.Durai
93 Arunmozhi Seran
102 Balakrishnan
74 Ramesh
116 P.Ravi (Opposition leader)
75 N.Ramalingam (Ruling party leader)

The Councilors use this time to address the Council about matters regarding their ward and city-related problems, as was done by Councilors P.Jayanti, Meenakshi Venkataraman and R.Durai. Party leaders P.Ravi and N.Ramalingam congratulated the Council on successful completion of their term.

The majority of the time at the Council meeting is spent on discussing resolutions. As the Mayor called out their names, the Councilors stood up to present their resolutions. Any resolution can be passed or implemented only with the approval of the Council. In this meeting, 64 resolutions were passed. Some councilors pass multiple resolutions; some resolutions are backed by multiple Councilors.

The reports that we read from the years 2007 and 2008 gave us a picture of chaotic Council sessions while the reports of the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 seemed more orderly. At the meeting we saw, the Council was in constant chaos. At any given time, half the Councilors are at the cafeteria adjacent to the Council chambers where they eat and talk with other Councilors. Councilors who are within the Chambers pay attention to the proceedings when it has to do with their ward, party or is of general importance. Often, while Councilors ask their questions, give their speeches or present their resolutions in a pre-decided order, there are several simultaneous mini-discussions going on. We saw one Councilor admonished and sent back to his seat by the Mayor for posing in front of the cameras with a paper.

Throughout the reports we have read there is very little mentioned of the Deputy Mayor Satyabama. At this meeting she was conspicuous in her silence. The meeting was attended by the Commissioner as well but he sat in only for the first half hour. He was later replaced by the Deputy Commissioner.

At the end of the speech session, the Mayor addressed the Council congratulating the Council on the good work done in this term and the last 10 years.  He said that the within 20 days the date for the Council election would be announced. The last Council meeting will be held in September only to announce the placement of the ballot boxes. He thanked the Council for their cooperation and wished them luck for the election.

Following are the links to the media coverage on this meeting we could dig up-

The Hindu

News Today

CNN IBN via The Times of India

CNN IBN via The New Indian Express 1

CNN IBN via The New Indian Express 2

CNN IBN via The New Indian Express 3

Meryl Mary Sebastian

[1] The Hindu, ‘Tamil Nadu Assembly adopts resolution approving commutation of death sentence’, 30 Aug 2011. < http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article2411347.ece>

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