NEYVELI: Following in the footsteps of other dominant castes, now Nadars too want to become politically active to “get their due representation in the legislative assembly.” The Tamil Nadu Nadar Peeravai organised its first “political rising” conference in Neyveli on Sunday at a time when all political parties had been getting ready for the next assembly elections and announced that it would organise a series of such conferences in various other districts also.
“We are one of the four dominant castes in the state. While the Vanniyars, Thevars and Dalits have considerable representation in the state assembly, Nadars have a very low representation with only 12 MLAs,” said N R Dhanabalan, president of the Tamil Nadu Nadar Peeravai.
He pitched the population of the Nadar community to almost 1/6th of the state population to justify that the community deserves at least 60 MLAs to represent it in the assembly. He said that his organisation has demanded representation for the Nadar community in the upper house of the assembly and the Chief Minister has agreed to fulfil the demand.
Indicating that the caste organisation might lend support to the ruling DMK in the next assembly elections, Dhanabalan sounded appreciative of the Chief Minister. A resolution thanking the chief minister for installing a constantly-burning lamp at former chief minister Kamarajar’s memorial was passed in the conference. However, Dhanabalan said that they were demanding MBC status for the Nadar caste and also to lift the ban on toddy tapping which has affected the livelihood of over 10 lakh people in the community involved in it. He maintained that toddy is not an addictive drug as the alcohol content in it was very low. A functionary of the organisation said that only if their demand to lift the ban on toddy tapping was met would people from that community support the ruling party in the next assembly elections.
Among the invitees for the conference include four ministers hailing from the community - state health minister M R K Paneerselvam, Social Welfare Minister P Geetha Jeevan, IT Minister Poongothai Aruna and Union Minister V Narayanaswamy. However, only the two women ministers turned up at the event.