Chennai, Mar 11 (IANS): Puducherry LG Tamilisai Soundararajan has cleared all the pending projects which were held up her predecessor Kiran Bedi including the grant-in-aid (GIA) to 33 schools for the payment of salaries and pension of around 800 staff members and 300 pensioners.

Several welfare schemes, salary disbursals and other payments were kept in abeyance by Bedi for the past four years.

The state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is trying to break grab the power in the poll-bound state, is upbeat at the decision of the LG and finds that the decisions of the LG have gone down well with the public and would do good to the party.

A Namasivayam, senior leader of the state, who resigned from the Congress and joined the BJP told IANS, "The new LG understands the pulse of the people and sanctioning the GIA is a humanitarian decision. The staff and the pensioners were suffering from the last 14 months and now it is the time for them to rejoice."

Soundararajan has also sanctioned open bars and distilleries which were shut down owing to irregularities during the Covid period. However, around 15 bars were not allowed to function as irregularities were not cleared.

The roads which were destroyed during the cyclones, Nivar and Burevi, were not being repaired as the then LG Kiran Bedi didn't cleared the files. She had refused to approve the new rates fixed by the V Narayananswamy government. The new LG has now sanctioned an amount of Rs 80.40 crore for the road project in Puducherry and Karikkal taking loans from NABARD.

BJP Puducherry unit president Swaminathan said, "The LG has done her duty and her decisions are benefitting the common people. Sanctioning of GIA is a great initiative which has directly benefitted 800 serving teaching staff and 300 retired staff."

Soundararajan had also made news by travelling in public transport and interacting with people, especially women and tried to understand their problems.