N-E Protection Panel Calls on Top Officials in State

A committee formed by the Union Home Ministry to look into the problems faced by Northeast people living in other parts of the country conducted a meeting with top State government officials, police officers, university officials and representative of the Northeast in the Chennai on Saturday.

CHENNAI: A committee formed by the Union Home Ministry to look into the problems faced by Northeast people living in other parts of the country conducted a meeting with top State government officials, police officers, university officials and representative of the Northeast in the Chennai on Saturday.

The committee, which was formed in February following widespread outrage over the death of Nido Taniam, a student from Arunachal Pradesh in New Delhi, visited Chennai as part of its ongoing visit to various metro cities across the nation.

Police officers who attended the meeting at the Secretariat said the committee was headed by retired IAS officer Alemtemshi Jamir. It conducted separate meetings with top officials and officers from different fields in the State to understand the issues faced by the Northeast community in Tamil Nadu. The committee also met representatives of the Northeast community living in Chennai.

“The overall feedback given by the representatives of the community to the committee was that they don’t face any major discrimination issues here. However, the incident triggered widespread rumours in 2012 on planned attacks against the community following which many of them briefly returned to their home states, was flagged in the meeting.

The committee stressed the need to prevent any such rumours in future,” said a police officer. The committee also met registrars and vice-chancellors of a few universities in the city and discussed the issues faced by the Northeast students studying in various institutes in the city.

Interacting with State government officials, the committee stressed the importance of assimilation and awareness about the culture Northeastern community to avoid any possible discrimination against them.

Since most of the migrants from Northeast are working as labourers, the committee also stressed the need to check their exploitation by employers.

According to police statistics, there are about 34,000 people from Northeast living in Tamil Nadu out of which nearly 10,000 are in Chennai. This included about 2,000 students.

Jaya christens six wild elephants

Chennai: Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Saturday christened six wild elephants which were captured from areas near Vellore and are being nurtured at the sanctuary at Anamalai and Mudumalai. While the male elephant at Anamalai sanctuary has been christened as Narasimha, two female elephants there got the names Devi and Kaaveri. Similarly, the two male elephants at Mudumalai sanctuary have been named as Bharathi and Krishna, the female one got the name Narmada, an official release here In the recent past, wild elephants, moving from the reserved forest areas of Western Ghats through Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to Javvadu and Yelagiri hill areas.

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