Madras High Court stays acquisition of Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence

The Madras High Court on Wednesday quashed an order by the erstwhile AIADMK government to acquire the palatial bungalow owned by late Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa in upscale Poes Garden and convert it into a memorial for her.

Striking down the order of the Edappadi K Palaniswami government, which lost the April 2021 elections, the High Court also directed authorities to hand over the residence to Deepa and Deepak – the children of Jayalalithaa’s only brother Jayakumar.

The High Court had in 2020 ruled that Deepa and Deepak were the legal heirs of Jayalalithaa as she did not leave any will. The then AIADMK government had acquired the palatial bungalow against Deepa and Deepak’s wishes and converted it into a memorial for the late leader.

However, Deepa and Deepak went to the court against the acquisition.

The sprawling mansion in upscale Poes Garden was where Jayalalithaa resided for nearly 50 years after her mother, Sandhya, bought the bungalow in the late 1960s. A trip to Poes Garden residence was nothing short of a pilgrimage to lakhs of AIADMK cadre when Jayalalithaa, who nurtured the party founded by her mentor M G Ramachandran, was alive.

After her death in 2016, the Tamil Nadu government had, in 2017, announced that the Poes Garden bungalow will be converted into a memorial for Jayalalithaa.

The bungalow, whose value is nearly Rs 100 crore as of today, was purchased by Jayalalithaa’s mother Sandhya for Rs 1.32 lakh in 1967. Sandhya bought the front portion of the mansion in the 1960s, but Jayalalithaa expanded the bungalow by acquiring nearby properties.

For Jayalalithaa, the Poes Garden residence was more than a home. A voracious reader, she had set up a library that housed nearly 8,000 books, overlooking her bedroom on the first floor.

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