Members of Denotified Tribes Welfare Association staged a novel protest on the Collectorate premises on Monday here by attempting to conceal a whole pumpkin inside a plate of boiled rice in a reference to the popular Tamil proverb to demonstrate the alleged denial of the plight of denotified communities by Tamil Nadu government.
The members, in particular, blamed the Backward Class Welfare Department, headed by Minister S. Valarmathi, for refusing to take any action towards their long-pending demand for reclassifying them as Denotified Tribes (DNT) from the current classification of Denotified Communities (DNC).
“With the government order 1310 of the State government issued in 1979, the State government at one stroke of a pen classified as DNCs from DNTs. As DNTs, who were persecuted under the British rule through the Criminal Tribes Act and continued to live under backward socio-economic conditions, we were eligible for welfare benefits from the Central government. Due to GO 1310, we lost all that,” said A.V. Marimuthu, general secretary of the association.
Stating that different communities, now classified as DNCs, have been fighting for reclassification as DNTs for nearly 40 years now, he said that successive State governments failed to address their concerns.
B. Thavamani Devi, general secretary of the women’s wing of the association, blamed the BC Welfare Minister for citing a case pending in the Supreme Court regarding the reservation of 69 % allocated to different SC, ST, BC, MBC communities in the State.
“This case was not a hurdle when previous governments gave separate reservations for Arunthathiyar community and Muslims within the 69 % reservation and included the Nari Kurava community as Scheduled Tribes. Then, why is it becoming a problem for us alone,” she asked.
Moreover, the members claimed that their primary objective of getting them reclassified as DNTs was not to avail the benefits of the reservation policy of the State government, but to get various benefits provided by the union government.
