State witnessed max agitations: Jayalalithaa

Chennai: Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa on Tuesday said that  the state witnesses maximum number of agitations constituting more than 25 per cent of the protests reported in the county.

“Political parties, caste, communal and other interest groups have been conducting agitations on numerous issues, but all these protests have been handled tactfully without giving room for violence or major disturbances,” she said in the policy note tabled in the Assembly here.

According to a study carried out by the Bureau of Police Research and Development, Tamil Nadu witnesses the maximum of agitations in the country. “On the other hand, the number of occasions on which the police resorted to use of force while handling agitations is only 0.05 per cent of the overall figure of the entire country. This indicates that even while allowing the full expression of the democratic and constitutional rights of the public for assemblies and procession to air their grievances, the police in the state have been able to manage them in such a manner that the normal tenor of life is not affected, despite the fact that on an average sixty agitations are reported per day,” the policy note said.  

Pointing to the violence and damage to property and disruption of life in previous years, she said that from the year 2013, certain regulations have been introduced, mainly by way of banning movement of hired vehicles from other districts.

“This had a salutary effect and all the events passed off peacefully without any untoward incident,” she said, noting that the government has also been taking more pre emptive measures to prevent violence during such protests like collecting intelligence from the village level.