Farmers Movement Archive

DMK convenes ‘people’s sabha’ to protest govt move

CHENNAI: With the AIADMK government preventing the scheduled grama sabha meetings on October 2 citing Covid-19 pandemic, the opposition parties slammed the ruling party for preventing participative democracy from flourishing in the state. If the AIADMK’s executive committee meeting can be held and Tasmac shops could be opened with police protection to maintain physical distancing, what prevented the state government from permitting grama sabha meetings from taking place, they asked. “It is the fear of the DMK getting closer to the people and highlighting the ill-effects of the farms acts, which were blindly supported by the AIADMK, to the villagers that provoked the state to issue a late night order to cancel all grama sabha meetings that were scheduled to take place on Friday,” DMK president M K Stalin said. With the state cancelling the official grama sabha meetings, the DMK opted to organise ‘people’s sabha’ in villages across the state. Stalin attended one such meeting organised at Pudhusathiram village in Thiruvallur district. “The AIADMK government is fearing the DMK more than it fears the coronavirus. We will continue to work to bring people together to oppose such anti-farmer initiatives like the farm laws,” Stalin said. “We passed resolutions against the farm acts at the meetings held in our region. The government thought by preventing the grama sabha meetings, they will prevent us from passing such a resolution,” DMK MLA from Mannargudi T R B Rajaa told TOI. “We will send the resolutions it to our party headquarters,” he said. Condemning the state government’s decision to cancel grama sabhas, AMMK general secretary T T V Dhinakaran questioned the attempts to gather large crowds to attend chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami’s district tours. “Grama sabha meetings provide the opportunity for villagers to meet, discuss and demand the required facilities for their villages. Will Covid spread only through such meetings,” Dhinakaran asked. Actor Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM), which brought renewed focus on grama sabhas last year by highlighting the benefits of such meetings, too hit out at the state government. “One is left to wonder how Covid-19 spread became a threat uniformly across all districts on Thursday night that forced district administrations to ban the meetings. When the state could deploy police force to streamline crowds, while reopening Tasmac shops, what prevented the authorities from doing the same to hold grama sabha meetings,” R Mahendran, vice-president, MNM asked.

The Times of India

2020-10-03

Chennai