CM pleads for communal amity

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, FEB. 21. As politics involving the backward classes gets touchy in the run-up to the Assembly polls, the DMK president and Chief Minister, Mr. M. Karunanidhi, pushed for consensus politics that averts pitting one community against the other.

Speaking at a function here this evening after unveiling the statue of the late S.S.Ramasamy Padayatchiyar, a prominent leader of the Vanniyar community and a former State Minister, Mr. Karunanidhi said the occasion should serve to ``rededicate ourselves'' to work for the upliftment of all sections of society. That would be the best tribute to Padayatchiyar.

Setting aside ``all that divides us,'' the objective was to strive for the welfare of not just the BC, MBC and Dalits, but reaching out to society at large without jeopardising the already well off sections, Mr. Karunanidhi said in trying to curiously balance class and caste interests.

Recalling the contributions of Padayatchiyar to shape Tamil Nadu's polity at a crucial time, first as the leader of the `Uzhavar Uzhaipalar Katchi' and then in the Congress as a representative of a powerful OBC community from North-South Arcot belt, Mr. Karunanidhi said it was the former who first voiced the need for a separate reservation for the most backward classes (MBC) including the Vanniyars.

Though this became the focal point of a ``war cry later'' (by the Vanniyar Sangam headed by Dr. S. Ramadoss), Mr. Karunanidhi without naming the PMK, which recently quit the DMK- led front, said, how DMK cadres were attacked by the ``reservation agitationists'' in 1988 when they were returning after a function in Chennai to inaugurate `Anna Arivalayam', the DMK's new headquarters.

It was the DMK Government on assuming power in 1989 which resolved the reservation issue, earmarking 20 per cent separate quota for the MBCs' including Vanniyars, Mr. Karunanidhi said, adding, adequate compensation had been paid to the families of 23 persons who had died in that agitation, followed by a monthly pension to their legal heirs.

Adverting to the TRC leader and former Union Minister, Mr. Vazhapadi K. Ramamurthy, who in the function urged him to pay compensation to three more families whose bread-winners had died in the quota agitation, he said, the Government will fulfill that demand too.

Mr. Ramamurthy said he was touched by the DMK Government's gesture to unveil a statue for Padayatchiyar within a year of Prof. Dheeran, Vanniyar Adigalar and himself, making this plea. The late leader's son, Mr. S. S. R. Ramadoss, and other relatives were honoured at the function.

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Section  : Southern States
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