Chennai, Nov 9:
In the first major administrative crackdown over alleged procurement irregularities at the Periyar Arivulagam library project in Coimbatore, the Tamil Nadu government has stripped senior IAS officer Jayanthi of her additional charge as Director of Public Libraries and appointed IAS officer Shajeevana to head the department.
Jayanthi, who serves as the Chairman of the Tamil Nadu Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB), had been holding additional responsibility as Director of the Directorate of Public Libraries. The bureaucratic reshuffle follows intense political sparring between the ruling TVK and the opposition DMK over the multi-crore procurement of books for the sprawling library facility, which was initiated during the previous DMK government and inaugurated by Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay on October 16.
The row erupted after acclaimed Tamil author and Sahitya Akademi awardee Perumal Murugan published a detailed critique highlighting that standard publication lists were bypassed in favor of substandard, self-published, and dummy volumes procured at inflated rates. While DMK leaders claimed the purchasing protocols occurred transparently under expert committees, Minister Rajmohan released documented files showing that supply sanctions and financial releases were approved during the previous administration. With the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) actively reviewing vendor contracts, the government removed the incumbent head to facilitate an impartial probe.