AIADMK now seeks to play a caste card

Chennai: AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami called for a one-day hunger strike on Saturday, August 24, to protest against the reported government move to merge the schools and hostels run under the Kallar Reclamation Scheme with the State government education department.

In a statement on Tuesday, Palaniswami said the protest would be held near the Chekkanoorani bus stand in Madurai district from 9 am to 5 pm with party Dindigul West secretary and MLA Dindigul C Srinivasan presiding over it and all top leaders from the revenue districts of Madurai, Dindigul and Theni taking part in it.

Palaniswami said that those schools and hostels were built with the funds and lands given away by the members of the community for educating the future generations and the government had conspired to deprive the community of its rights and privileges.

He said that though he had warned the government of a protest by the AIADMK if it did not drop its plans of bringing the schools having a historic past under the State Education Department, there had been no response to it and hence he had called for the one-day protest.

Calling upon party leaders, functionaries and cadre from the revenue districts of Madurai, Dindigul and Theni to take part in the hunger strike, he warned that the government was planning to take away the schools from the Kallar Reclamation Scheme and depriving the community of the facility it had developed for itself over the years.

The Kallar Reclamation Scheme, formed to improve the education of the Parimala Kallar community which comes under the Most Backward Classes (MBC), runs 295 schools and 54 hostels in the districts of Madurai, Dindigul and Theni. The schools offer free books and uniforms and other facilities for the students.

When Retired High Court Judge K Chandru was appointed by the State government to recommend ways to prevent caste based violence in schools last year, the one man commission came up with a set of recommendations and one of them was to merge all schools under the school education department.

The report recommended the dropping of all caste appellations from the names of the schools, specifically mentioning ‘Kallar Reclamation Schools’ and Adi Dravida Schools, among others.

Perhaps the State government, in its attempt to implement the recommendations of the Chandru Committee Report was making moves to merge the schools, now functioning under the Backward Classes Welfare Board, with the School department.

But Palaniswami claimed that the move that had ulterior motives would deprive the most backward community of its basic rights and destroy some historic identities associated with Kallar Reclamation Scheme.

Through the agitation, Palaniswami apparently tries to consolidate his vote bank in the districts of Madurai, Dindigul and Theni, where the schools and hostels are located, and also mobilise the community, among which the party is quite popular even otherwise.