Chennai: Leader of Opposition, M.K. Stalin on Saturday complained that 27 per cent reservation for backward communities as per the Mandal Commission’s recommendations had not been implemented and appealed to youth to raise their voice to for their rights.
Releasing the autobiography of DK president K. Veeramani titled Ayyavin Adichuvattil to mark his 84th birthday celebrations, Stalin said only 12 per cent of jobs had been reserved to backward communites, 26 years after the implementation of the commission report.
Out of the 651 jobs in the UPSC office only nine per cent had been reserved to BCs and there is not a single A grade official from the BC communities at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Stalin said.
Assuring that the ideals of Dravidian movement’s founder E.V.R. Periyar would continue to be the policies of the DMK, he said. Stalin said the social justice policy of Periyar had been transformed into the DMK’s programme and it would be so in future.
The DMK is functioning in the electoral arena and the DK in the social reformation sphere, the two parties would fight together, where there is a danger to Tamils, Stalin said and recalled that party president M. Karunanidhi had described the two movements as double barrel guns.
Property rights for women is a key resolution in Periyar’s self-respect movement’s conference in 1929 and the DMK government in 1989 enacted a law to ensure its implementation. The UPA government introduced the law ensuring property rights for women at the national level in 2006, he said. The DMK was instrumental in the implementation of Mandal Commission’s recommendation providing 27 per cent reservation for OBCs.
Stalin recalled his association with Veeramani, when the youth wing leader was jailed under MISA. He said Veeramani with comforting words dispelled Stalin’s fears as soon as he entered the prison room.
