CHENNAI:DMK leader M Karunanidhi on Friday said Chief Minister O Panneerselvam should have held talks with the protesting law college students immediately after they began their agitations against the shifting of their college from the Madras High Court campus.
On a day when party treasurer M K Stalin visited the protesting students and assured his party’s support, Karunanidhi issued a statement saying that the Chief Minister had deployed police to resolve the issue instead of calling the representatives of students for talks. An early dialogue would have averted the lathicharge and the snowballing of protests, he said. The government had held negotiations with the students representatives belatedly, he charged.
He also urged the Chief Minister to hold negotiations with the YMCA students, who were agitating for basic amenities in the institution. They should be pacified and their problems sorted out, he said.
Earlier, Stalin met the students who were holding protests and expressed solidarity with them. The law college could be shifted temporarily to a nearby place and it should not be shifted permanently, he said.
DMDK leader Vijayakant too condemned the police action on students and sought action on the police involved in the lathicharge. The Chief Minister should have called the students for talks and resolved the issue amicably, even if he was planning to shift the law college, he said.
PMK leader S Ramadoss, MDMK’s Vaiko, VCK’s Thol Thirumavalavan and CPM State secretary G Ramakrishnan had already condemned the police action and demanded that the Ambedkar Law College should function from within the Madras High Court campus.