CHENNAI: VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan on Friday submitted a petition to Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin urging him to constitute a state-level commission for scheduled castes and take efforts to retrieve Panchami land.
“Since 1996, we have been requesting the state government to form a state commission for SCs.
The Madras high court directed the state government in early 2016 to form the commission.
The then Jayalalithaa government informed the court that they would form the commission within six months.
But nothing happened,” said VCK MP D Ravikumar who accompanied party chief Thirumavalavan to submit the petition.
“The CM has assured us that he would look into our demand,” he said and noted that the presence of such a commission would give the necessary legal aid and protection to the victims of atrocities and caste violence which is on the rise in the state.
On Panchami land row, Ravikumar said they had been demanding for the last three decades that the state government identify and retrieve Panchami lands.
The HC had also issued multiple orders in this regard, while former CMs Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi had formed committees to look into the issue.
But nothing happened till date.
“The AIADMK regime had once announced that it had identified 2.5 lakh acres of Panchami land in the state.
But land was not transferred to the real beneficiaries,” he said.