The city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India is administered by the Corporation of Chennai headed by a Mayor. The Mayor is the first citizen of the city. The person is the chief of the Chennai Municipal Corporation. ^[1] The Chennai Municipal Corporation has a history of 323 years and the Office of Mayor was formed in 1933.^[2] The corporation has been served by 48 different mayors as of 2012. Priya Rajan is the current mayor chennai.^[2]

The city is divided into 200 wards, each of them headed by a councillors who work under the Mayor.^[2] In addition to the 200 councilors, there are Deputy Commissioners and Heads of various departments and 15 Zonal officers.^[2]

First mayoralty

The Corporation of Madras, the second oldest in the British Empire and the first outside the United Kingdom, was inaugurated on 29 September 1688 based on a Charter issued by James II, King of England. As per the provisions of the charter, Nathaniel Higginson, a member of the Fort St George Council, was appointed first mayor of the city. Higginson resigned after six months and was succeeded by John Littleton. Interrupted between 1746 and 1753 by the brief French occupation of Madras, the post of mayor survived with minor amendments till 1798.

The mayoralty of Madras was amended by the Charter of George I of 1727, Charter II of 1753 and the Company's Charter of 1787. Elections to the office were held annually - from 1688 to 1726, the appointment was made on 29 September, from 1727 to 1753, on 20 December and from 1753 to 1798, on the first Tuesday of every December. From 1798 the Mayor and Aldermen sat in the Recorder's Court until 1801, when that Court was merged in the Supreme Court of Judicature. The post of mayor was revived only in 1933.

Presidents

Between 1793 and 1856, municipal administration was in the control of Justices of Peace who also had judicial powers in the city. In 1856, the positions were abolished as per the Madras City Municipal Act XIV of 1856. The judges were replaced with three Municipal Commissioners from the civil service. The commissioners collected municipal taxes and enacted laws for the conservancy and improvement of the city. However, the system failed due to lack of financial accountability and the Municipal Corporation was revived in 1860 by the efforts of Sir Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras.

From 1886 onwards, a president was appointed to head the corporation and perform the duties of a mayor. The first president of the corporation was Lieutenant-Colonel G. M. J. Moore, who was then serving as military secretary to the governor of Madras. Presidents were generally appointed for a four-year term but this was reduced to one in 1910. Civil servant T. Raghavaiah was the first Indian to act as President of the Madras Corporation. The first to be appointed as full-time president was T. Vijayaraghavacharya in 1916. P. Theagaraya Chetty of the Justice Party, appointed in 1919, was the first to represent a political party.

#	Portrait	Name	Took office	Left office	Term[nb 1]
1		G. M. J. Moore	1886	1902	1
2		S. D. Pears	1902	1906	1
3		E. S. Lloyd	1906	1910	1
4		N. MacMichael (acting)	1910	1910	1
5		P. L. Moore	1910	1911	1
6		T. Raghavaiah (acting)	1911	1911	1
7		P. L. Moore	1911	1913	2
8		A. Y. G. Campbell (acting)	1913	1913	1
9		P. L. Moore	1913	1914	3
10		E. S. Lloyd	1914	1914	2
11		J. C. Molony	1914	1916	1
12		T. Vijayaraghavacharya	1916	1916	1
13		J. C. Molony	1916	1917	2
14		H. H. Burkitt	1917	1918	1
15		J. C. Molony	1918	1919	3
16		Muhammad Bazullah	1919	1919	1
17		P. Theagaraya Chetty	1919	1923	1
18		V. Thirumalai Pillai	1923	1924	1
19		Mohammad Usman	1924	1925	1
20		O. Thanikachalam Chetti	1925	1925	1
21		Sami Venkatachalam Chetty	1925	1926	1
22		G. N. Chetty	1926	1928	1
23		Arcot Ramaswamy Mudaliar	1928	1930	1
24		P. T. Kumarasamy Chetty	1930	1931	1
25		T. S. Ramaswamy Iyer	1931	1932	1
26		M. A. Muthiah Chettiar	1932	1933	1

Mayors

#	Portrait	Name	Took Office	Left Office	Term[nb 1]
1		M. A. Muthiah Chettiar	8 March 1933	7 November 1933	1
2		W. W. Ladden	1933	1934	1
3 (1)		M. A. Muthiah Chettiar	1934	1935	2
4		Abdul Hameed Khan	1935	1936	1
5		K. Sriramulu Naidu	1936	1937	1
6		J. Shivashanmugam Pillai	1937	1938	1
7		K. Venkataswamy Naidu	1938	1939	1
8		S. Satyamurti	1939	1940	1
9		C. Basudev	May 1940	May 1941	1
10		G. Janakiram Chetty	May 1941	November 1941	1
11		V. Chakkarai Chettiar	1941	1942	1
12		C. Tadulinga Mudaliar	1942	1943	1
13		Syed Niamatullah	1943	1944	1
14		M. Radhakrishna Pillai	1944	1945	1
15		N. Sivaraj	1945	1946	1
16		T. Sundara Rao Naidu	1946	1947	1
17		U. Krishna Rao	1947	1948	1
18		S. Ramaswamy Naidu	1948	1949	1
19		P. V. Cherian	1949	1950	1
20		R. Ramanathan Chettiar	1950	1951	1
21		C. H. Sibghatullah	1951	1952	1
22		T. Chengalvorayan	1952	1953	1
23		B. Parameswaran	1953	1954	1
24		R. Munusamy	1954	1954
25		M. A. Chidambaram	1954 (?)	1955	1
26		V. R. Ramanatha Iyer	1955	1956	1
27		K. N. Srinivasan	1956	1957	1
28		Tara Cherian	December 1957	November 1958	1
29		K. Kamalakannan	November 1958	April 1959	1
30		A. P. Arasu	April 1959	December 1959	1
31		M. S. Abdul Khader	1959	1960	1
32		V. Munusamy	1960	1961	1
33		G. Kuchelar	1961	1963
34		R. Sivasankar Mehta	November 1963	March 1964	1
35		S. Krishnamurthy	1964	1965	1
36		C. Chitti Babu	1965	1966	1
37		M. Minor Moses	1965	1966
38		Era Sambandham	1966	1967	1
39		Habibullah Baig	1967	1968	1
40		Velur D. Narayanan	1968	1969	1
41		V. Balasundaram	1969	1970	1
42		S. A. Ganesan	1970	1971	1
43		Kamakshi Jayaraman	1971	1972	1
44		R. Arumugam	1972	30 November 1973	1
Corporation / Mayoralty suspended (1 December 1973 - 25 October 1996)
45		M. K. Stalin	25 October 1996	6 September 2002	1
(45)			September 2001	June 2002	2
46		Karate R. Thiagarajan	October 2002	October 2006	1
47		M. Subramaniam	October 2006	September 2011	1
48		Saidai Sa. Duraisamy	25 October 2011	24 October 2016[5]	1
Corporation / Mayoralty suspended (25 October 2016 - 3 March 2022)
49		Priya Rajan	4 March 2022[6]	Incumbent	1

Footnotes

Notes

References

• S. Muthiah, ed. (2008). "Appendix 2". Madras, Chennai: A 400-year record of the first city of Modern India. Vol. 1. Palaniappa Brothers. p. 438.

External links

• Official website