Chennai: After a hiatus of three months, the DMK and the opposition parties are getting ready for the monthly council meeting to be held on Wednesday.The DMK-led front with 155 councillors, the AIADMK alliance with 14 councillors, and the TVK alliance with 27 councillors are devising a floor plan. Deputy mayor Mahesh Kumar said all the parties will be allowed to speak, raise civic issues, and stick to their roles.“We will allow debates on people’s issues and pass resolutions on state govt projects. We will not entertain resolutions that are against our ideology and is against the state’s social fabric,” he said.The 13 Congress councillors on Monday convened for a meeting at Ripon Buildings to pass three resolutions. The first one was to allot an office for the Congress in the Ripon Buildings, the second one was to reassign the seating arrangements for all opposition parties together, and the third is to allow limited tenders for projects in councillor’s funds.Earlier, the seating for Congress was alongside DMK as they were in alliance. Now, the TVK-alliance has 27 members — 13 from Congress, four from VCK, four from left, one from IUML, and five independent councillors.Congress councillor S Amirda Varshini said the DMK zonal chairmen in ward committee meetings refused to consider their proposals. Instead, they told them to give it to MLAs, as they are no longer in DMK alliance. “We will face sharp attacks even in council. Hence, we have asked to rearrange the spacing for all opposition councillors to sit together. We will speak on issues and decide on our floor plan on a case by case basis,” she said.“We also sought to allow limited tenders, as local work requiring urgent attention can be finished quickly. If there are open tenders for small work, the process will get delayed,” she said.The AIADMK councillors said they will be taking up issues on the “poor administration” of the TVK govt. Last week, four councillors, including two from AIADMK, one from AMMK, defected to TVK.
