CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has accorded Backward Class status to the Thiyya and Ezhava communities after a committee constituted by the state government gave its nod to give BC community certificates.
According to a government order passed by B Chandramohan, secretary of Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Department, both the communities have been included in the list of backward classes following the recommendations of the committee.
The four-member panel, led by Revenue Secretary Atulya Misra, submitted its recommendations following which the communities have been given Backward Class status.
The decision comes 44 years after the entry of ‘Thiyya of Ponnani, Palghat, Walluvanad and Ernad Taluks of Malabar’ was omitted from the state government’s list of BCs in 1976 after the then government decided that communities which were outside the state need not be on its list of BCs.
Similarly, the Ezhuva community, which had been among the BCs in the erstwhile Travancore-Cochin State, remained a BC in Kanniyakumari district and Shencottah taluk of the erstwhile Tirunelveli district even after the merger of these areas with the erstwhile Madras State.
It was on September 6, 2001 that the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment published in the Gazette that the Thiyya community be included in the Central List of OBCs in the state of Tamil Nadu based on a recommendation of the National Commission for Backward Castes.