VILLUPURAM: Around 2,200 tribal Irulars staged a stir demanding pending free house patta be issued to beneficiaries, and action against police who allegedly filed false cases against Irular men, in four districts on Monday.
The protest was held in Tiruvanannamalai, Cuddalore, Villupuram and Kallakurichi. It was conducted by ‘Pazhangudi Irular Paathukaapu Sangam’, a guild working to protect the rights of the Irular community. The protesters flagged issues with people from Irular communities not being able to access applications for free patta on online facilities.
Activist and founder of the guild, Kalyani told TNIE, The Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu on November 11 released an order to survey all Irular communities in the state and provide them with free patta. “However, the order has not been implemented fully as the officials from the taluk and block levels told Irular persons to apply for it only via the online site. Online facilities are not accessible and the Irulars urge officials to consider offline applications.”
Kalayani said the protest march had been earlier planned from Cuddalore towards the Secretariat. “Due to security reasons, we conducted multiple stirs simultaneously.” The protesters further demanded an increase in the upper limit of subsidised sanctioned loans from Rs 1.5 to Rs 5.5 lakh under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY).
Regarding the increase in loan slab for PMAY scheme, S Sivagami, organisation coordinator, said, “The house under the current PMAY scheme is the size of a carton box. It’s barely spacious. If the fund is increased, we could have a spacious house to accommodate all our family members in a healthy space. We also struggle to arrange the remaining amount to build our houses as the present fund is never enough for a ‘pucca’ house.”