Month Reviewed

New D. M. K. Mayor

Mr. R. Sambandam, 33-year old Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Councillor from Sevagram, Nungambakkam, was elected Mayor of Madras Corporation on November 29. He defeated Mr. R. Arumugham of the same party who contested the election flouting the party mandate and with the backing of the Congress.

Stormy scenes preceded the Mayoral election and excitement ran high as the Congress party nominated in a dramatic move another D. M. K. Councillor, whose candidature was rejected by the D. M. K. party bosses, to contest the election.

As bewildered D. M. K. members tried to persuade Mr. R. Arumugham, Councillor from 23rd Division, who in a last minute bid to become the Mayor rebelled against party mandate, D. M. K. volunteers who jampacked the visitors gallery were locked in a scuffle. The Mayor sought police help to restore order. The visitors including some top D. M. K. leaders were ordered to go

out.

Mr. Sambandam, however, defeated his rival by 53 votes to 45, in the secret poll conducted by the Mayor after he asked Press reporters and photographers also to leave the Council hall.

Mr. T. Krishnamurthi, D. M. K. Councillor elected from Choolai, was unanimously elected Deputy Mayor.

Mr. Arumugham was proposed and seconded by two Congress members following an unsuccessful attempt by a D. M. K. member to propose his name.

The unexpected turn of events, soon after the Council met to elect the Mayor, led to confusion lasting for over 30 minutes.

According to the communal rotation in vogue for the election of the Mayor, the mayoralty for 1966-67 should go to one of

the 76 Hindu non-Brahmin councillors in the 104-member Council. The party position in the Council is as follows D. M. K. 54, Congress 39, Muslim League 5, Communist 1 and Independent 5.

Mr. Sambandam, who is a councillor, for the second term now joined the D. M. K. staight from the high school. For a brief period, he was in the Tamil National Party which itself splintered from the D. M. K. When the Tamil National Party, led by Mr. E. V. K. Sampath, merged with the Congress after the general elections in 1962, Mr. Sambandam came back to the D. M. K. fold. Mr. Sambandam, is engaged in real estate transactions. He is married and has twodaughters and a son.

The 33-year-old new Deputy Mayor has been a city councillor from 1959. He courted imprisonment during the anti-price rise agitation launched by the D. M. K. in July 1962. Mr. Krishnamurthi abandoned his academic career at the Pachayappa's College after completing the Intermediate course, to join the D. M. K. He runs a customs clearing and forwarding agency. He is married and has one daughter and one son.

Mr. Arumugham who was elected to the Council in 1962, is Chairman of the Licence Appeals Committee. The 32-year-old councillor is a businessman.

City Of Dawn

How often are platitudes on the brotherhood of man and universal peace heard these days, but how rarely is something practical done. All those who constantly yearn to get away from it all and yet are helplessly caught in the rat race of modern life will have reason to envy the new universal township planned near Pondicherry. Auroville, named after Sri Aurobindo, will be a town "where men and women of all “countries are able to live in "peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities." The project has already been appro

ved by the Indian National Commission for Co-operation with UNESCO and commended to 143 countries. Sponsored by the Sri Aurobindo Society and designed by an internationally reputed French architect, the township, with a fixed population of 50,000, will be divided into four zones-residential, cultural, industrial and international. With

the accent primarily on the spiritual. Auroville, or the "city of "dawn", will aim at the realisation of human unity by initiating a process of spiritual and cultural regeneration. Since it will stimulate the growth of higher values the project is bound to gain the support of all men of goodwill.

A-I Council of Mayors'

Recommendations

The executive committee of the All-India Council of Mayors at its concluding session in New Delhi on November 27 recommended the setting up of a municipal finance corporation with an authorised capital of Rs 10 crores to advance loans to civic bodies in the country.

The amount should be subscribed by the Union State Governments, the Reserve Bank, State Bank, L I.C., financial institutions and commercial banks.

The finance corporation should be run on commercial lines with powers to issue debentures and raise market loans under the guarantee of the Union Government.

The executive committee recommended that collections of tax on vehicles should be made over to civic bodies after deducting collection charges.

The committee urged the State Governments to pay all collections of entertainment tax in full to local bodies.

It demanded that the Government should

pay 100 per cent property tax for its buildings and not 75 per cent of general tax and service charges as suggested by the ruralurban relationship committee appointed by the Union Health Ministry.

The executive committee recommended that all municipal committees serving a town with a population of 500,000 and more

GANDHI MEMORIAL STATUE

Miss Fredda Brilliant pictured with her sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi at her studio in the southern England village of Henfield. She holds the first model which won her the commission for the major work with, behind her, the scale model and the almost completed clay model from which the final bronze cast will be made.

The British Government recently made a gift of £4,000 to the Gandhi Memorial Committee for the completion of the work, which is to stand in London's Tavistock to the Square as a permanent memorial founder of the Indian nation.

The executive committee recommended that mayors should not be mere figureheads but have some important executive functions to discharge so that they, might become symbols of the democratic structure.

People should look upon mayors as persons who could redress their grievances and not helplessly point their fingers towards commissioners.

The committee demanded that the mayor should be elected for a full term and not every years as at present in many corpo

rations.

The committee deprecated the practice of superseding councils for long periods. The period of supersession should not exceed one year in any case.

It urged the Planning Commission to give top priority to important and essential capital projects of municipal corporations and include all such projects in the Fourth Plan.

The committee authorised the Mayor of Delhi to get a plot of lad for the constru ction of the headquarters of the Mayor's Council.

Ulhas Water For Bombay City

Kalyan-Ambernath Manufactures' Association has opposed the Ulhas River water supply scheme of the Bombay Municipal Corporation.

In a memorandum submitted to the Chief Minister of Mahararhtra, Mr. V. P. Naik, the association said the drawing of water from the Ulhas River for use in Greater Bombay would result in a reduction of water available to the industries situated in this area, lowering the production of existing units and adversely affecting their expansion schemes.

The association demands that the Corporation should immediately take up the lower Kalu project as a stopgap arrangement till the upper Kalu and Bhatsai projects are completed. Till then it could draw only 20 million gallons per day with the understanding that after completion of the projects the Ulhas water would be used only for the Kalyan-Ambernath area."