CHENNAI: Welcoming with gusto Union Law minister Ravishankar Prasad's announcement in Parliament on Tuesday that the Postal department's competitive exams for recruitment to Group-D posts including Postman held on Sunday last that excluded regional languages will be cancelled and that the exam will be re-held, the DMK leader M K Stalin said it was a 'big victory' for the DMK.
The cancellation of the July 14 exam conducted by the Postal department in which there was no option for regional languages including Tamil and restricting it to English and Hindi, much to the consternation of local candidates in the respective states, "gives me great consolation," Stalin said in a statement here.
Stating that suddenly modifying the exam pattern, which used to be held also in Tamil for recruitments in Post services in Tamil Nadu, and restricting the test to English and Hindi, was extremely unfair to aspirants from the State, Mr. Stalin said it was the DMK, after reports in the media, which first took up the issue both with the Union Communications Ministry and in both Houses of Parliament, to pressure the Centre to get the Postal department withdraw its latest circular.
"As leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, I immediately brought this to the attention of the House with a special call attention motion, even as DMK MPs' sought to bring pressure on the Central government in both Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on this issue," Stalin said, adding, those efforts have paid off. Mr. Stalin said the way this issue was handled by the DMK was a clear demonstration of how the party acted with alacrity both at the State and Central levels in defending the interests of the people of Tamil Nadu, particularly in voicing against the "anti-democratic tendencies" of the BJP government which was giving special emphasis only to Hindi, ignoring regional languages.
He hoped that the BJP "would at least from now" give up this approach of projecting Hindi as the sole official language in a partisan manner though Tamil and other regional languages enjoyed an equal status in the Constitutional scheme of things.
The Centre assuring to correct its mistake in the Postal department exam issue was also a fitting reply to DMK's critics in Tamil Nadu who kept saying that DMK despite winning the LS polls here, will not be able to do anything at the Centre, added Mr. Stalin.
