A. Maheen, 52, rarely takes his four-wheeled scooter outside his hometown Parassala. But on Monday, he came riding all the way to the Central Stadium covering 30-odd km, on the scooter which the Parassala panchayat had provided to the physically challenged.
He was here to meet Chief Minister Oommen Chandy who started off the third phase of his mass contact programme — Karuthal 2015.
“I came here to ask him for help for self-employment. For the past 30 years, I have been collecting scrap metal and selling it in Tirunelveli and Nagercoil. The returns have diminished over the years and the bus trips to these places have become harder,” says Maheen.
Under the scorching April sun, Maheen and thousands of others stood in the queue to meet the Chief Minister, winding almost to the Central Stadium exit, all of them with many grievances — the most common ones being requests for medical aid and conversion of ration card from above the poverty line (APL) to below the poverty line (BPL).
There were several like Krishnankutty from Nemom who were coming back for a second time. A TB patient for the past 15 years, he had got Rs.3,000 as medical aid in the first phase of the programme. Now, he is struggling to meet the expenses for medicine, the cost of which has shot up in recent months.
There were several groups which came to raise their issues here.
From Varkala had come a group of 13 families who suddenly found themselves living in ‘puramboke’ land, after the recent resurvey.
This despite paying land taxes for the past several years.
The family of Sreelatha and Krishnankutti and their two differently abled children, who were about to lose their house to a revenue recovery for a loan availed in 1998, were relieved after the Chief Minister said the government would repay the outstanding loan amount.
Mr. Chandy, in his inaugural speech, said not a single person would be denied justice owing to complexities in official procedures.
“There were some criticisms about the last mass contact programme. ‘Karuthal 2015’ addressed all those criticisms by taking corrective measures. The government realised the difficulties of the people and decided to adopt a humanitarian approach. Instead of their coming personally to the Chief Minister, the government and its mechanism has attended to them at their homes and provided help,” he said.
But despite this promise, people with physical and mental challenges were seen in large numbers at the stadium on Monday.
Out of the 16,253 petitions received in the district, action was already taken on 13,449.
