Covid-19: Tamil Nadu Assembly session to be held in auditorium outside secretariat

Extraordinary situations call for extraordinary solutions. For the first time, the Tamil Nadu Assembly is likely to hold its session outside of the designated hall next month.

Since it would be impossible to hold the session in the existing Assembly hall due to space crunch, Speaker P Dhanapal is understood to have decided to move the session to a much larger auditorium to ensure physical distancing among legislators.

A multi-purpose auditorium in the rebuilt Kalaivanar Arangam, a few kilometres from the current Assembly premises, is likely to hold the monsoon session of the Tamil Nadu Assembly.

While the session was always conducted inside the Fort St George, the seat of power of the Tamil Nadu government, the Assembly had functioned from the new secretariat for about a year in 2010-2011 during the DMK regime. However, the AIADMK government led by the then Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa moved the secretariat back to Fort St George in May 2011.

For latest updates and live news on coronavirus, click here

The Assembly is likely to be convened mid-September, sources said, adding that it will be impossible to accommodate 234 legislators in the Assembly hall.

“At a time when physical distancing is mandatory, we cannot conduct Assembly proceedings inside the small hall. So, the Assembly Secretariat is considering hosting the session from Kalaivanar Arangam which has every infrastructure that is needed to conduct the proceedings,” a government official said.

Speaker Dhanapal and Assembly Secretary K Srinivasan have visited the Kalaivanar Arangam premises twice in the past week for an inspection. The new Kalaivanar Arangam was built after razing down the existing structure by the then Jayalalithaa government during 2011-2016.