The Arunthathi Makkal Katchi has appealed to the political parties to provide it an opportunity by supporting candidates from the Arunthathiyar community to contest at least two constituencies in the State for the forthcoming Parliamentary elections.
In a statement here, the founder-president of the party Valasai Ravichandran said the parties should consider fielding candidates from Arunthathiyar community by way of providing representation and political empowerment to this community that had a population of 50 lakh, constituting around 8 per cent of the votes in the State.
He said his party would prefer to field candidates in any of the two constituencies from Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram, Villupuram and the Nilgiris.
Ravichandran said the Arunthathiyar community members without proper political patronage and empowerment were not able to get the representation both in Parliament and the State Assembly for many decades. “We have been fighting to get social recognition for the community and all our efforts have been in vain,” he said adding, “Not a single candidate from this community has been able to contest from the seven Reserved Constituencies in the State for the Parliamentary election so far.”
Similarly, not a single candidate from this community has found a berth in the Rajya Sabha so far.
Out of the 44 reserved candidates who have been elected to the State Assembly, only two were from the Arunthathiyar community, he added.
According to him, members of the Chamar community (like the Arunthathiyars) in northern parts of the country have found good representation in Parliament, such as the Lok Sabha Speaker Mira Kumar, Ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde, Mukul Wasnik, K H Muniappa, Sathya Sarve Narayana, BSP leaders Kanshi Ram and Mayawathi.
In Tamilnadu, ‘we have been politically orphaned and our empowerment still appears to be a distant dream,’ he said.
“We are looking for an alliance with anyone who supports our ideologies,” he added.