Coimbatore: Clad in black shirts, around 100 people walked along Race Course circle on Wednesday early morning to express their displeasure over the model road project being implemented in the locality as part of the Smart City project.
The protesters gathered at Race Course at 6.30am and began walking in the clockwise direction. They were soon joined by a few walkers in plain clothes, cyclists, environmentalists, DMK members from Singanallur, members of Tamil Mandram, Congress candidate from Coimbatore South Mayura Jayakumar and MNM candidate from Singanallur Dr V Mahendran.
There has been a growing clamour against the model road work, which the local residents said involved cutting and uprooting of trees and erecting many steel and concrete structures. The main bone of contention was that the plan was executed without consulting the residents, who said they were not informed about the project.
Coimbatore: Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) chief Kamal Haasan courted a controversy on Wednesday after he attempted to shove off a television journalist with his walking stick when the latter tried to film him as he walked out of the Government College of Technology in the city, where electronic voting machines are stored.
The journalist was not injured in the incident. “It has caused me a lot of mental agony. He did this to me, despite telling him that I was a media person. I had taken videos of him several times during the election campaign. It is only now - after the election - he seems to have an issue with me,” the journalist said.