Knock, knock: Amma's teak chair and mini-budget awaiting audience, Huzoor - Calcutta Telegraph

back to tn bhavan...

Chief minister Jayalalithaa’s special chair being taken back to Tamil Nadu Bhavan after her meeting with finance minister Arun Jaitley in North Block on Tuesday. The ergonomically designed teak chair is kept at Tamil Nadu Bhavan for Jayalalithaa, who is known to suffer from a bad back and arthritis. It goes everywhere that she does, whether it is meetings at Vigyan Bhavan or the Parliament library or even Rashtrapati Bhavan. On Tuesday, Jayalalithaa was photographed sitting in her own chair during a meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee. When she is not visiting Delhi, the chair stays covered in a corner in Tamil Nadu Bhavan. (PTI pictures)

June 3: Narendra Modi has just got a preview of what his budget could look like. That is, if he decides to keep Jayalalithaa happy.

The Tamil Nadu chief minister today presented a memo with a list of demands that included central investment and assistance worth thousands of crores of rupees when she met the Prime Minister in Delhi.

She also raised issues close to Tamil hearts — Sri Lanka, Cauvery and Mullaiperiyar, the dam at the centre of a dispute between her state and Kerala.

According to copies of the memorandum that were distributed among reporters here, the AIADMK chief sought a special package for the fisheries sector worth Rs 1,520 crore with a recurring grant of Rs 10 crore a year and Rs 2,250 crore in central assistance for solar power transmission.

Jayalalithaa urged the Centre to release the Rs 1,576.87-crore shortfall in grants and Rs 7,039.96 crore towards central sales tax compensation. The memorandum urged the Centre to bear half the cost of three planned desalination projects.

On transport infrastructure, she wanted the Centre to invest in railway projects involving an outlay of Rs 188,400 crore.

... from jaitley’s office

Arun Jaitley and Jayalalithaa at the meeting in the finance minister’s office on Tuesday. She is seated in her special chair, which looks larger and more comfortable than Jaitley’s and is also of a lighter shade

Tamil Nadu also wants the Centre to fund expressway projects involving an investment of Rs 21,320 crore, apart from central funding for an underground sewage system involving a project cost of Rs 20,820 crore and Rs 29,200 crore for urban housing schemes.

On Lanka, Jayalalithaa demanded that India sponsor a resolution in the UN “condemning the genocide” and to “hold to account all those responsible for the genocide”.

but did it make it to pmo?

Jayalalithaa at the meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in South Block on Tuesday. While the chair she is seated on looks like that from Tamil Nadu Bhavan, it is not clear if it is indeed that one especially because Modi’s chair looks very similar. Perhaps the Prime Minister will tweet and enlighten the country

The memo said the resolution should also provide for a “referendum amongst Tamils in Sri Lanka and displaced Sri Lankan Tamils across the world for formation of a separate Tamil Eelam”.

The BJP has virtually toed the Congress line on Lanka, preferring to describe the civilian deaths in the 2009 Eelam war as human rights violations rather than genocide. Delhi knows it cannot afford to ask for a referendum without risking a similar demand in Kashmir.

Jayalalithaa also wanted Delhi to abrogate the 1974 and 1976 agreements and retrieve Katchatheevu, an islet in the Palk Strait ceded to Sri Lanka.

The AIADMK leader also raised two inter-state issues: formation of a Cauvery Management Board and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee for implementing the final order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal and nomination of a representative from the Central Water Commission to the supervisory committee to monitor the raising of the water level to 142ft in the Mullaiperiyar dam.

Chief minister Jayalalithaa’s special chair being taken back to Tamil Nadu Bhavan after her meeting with finance minister Arun Jaitley in North Block on Tuesday.

The ergonomically designed teak chair is kept at Tamil Nadu Bhavan for Jayalalithaa, who is known to suffer from a bad back and arthritis. It goes everywhere that she does, whether it is meetings at Vigyan Bhavan or the Parliament library or even Rashtrapati Bhavan.

On Tuesday, Jayalalithaa was photographed sitting in her own chair during a meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee. When she is not visiting Delhi, the chair stays covered in a corner in Tamil Nadu Bhavan. (PTI pictures)