Chennai: Demanding that a caste survey be undertaken along with the delayed census, Chief Minister M K Stalin said reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes and Minorities should be implemented properly and a committee of Members of Parliament should be appointed to monitor it at the national level.
After the unveiling of a life-size statue of former Prime Minister, V P Singh, at the Presidency College premises on Monday, Stalin, at a function in Kalaivanar Arangam, said that it was the first statue of the defender of social justice who implemented the Mandal Commission Report providing for 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in the country despite facing the risk of losing his government.
Among the other achievements of Singh, during his 11-month tenure as Prime Minister, were the first steps taken for bringing in the Right to Information Act, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Right to Employment Act, Lok Pal Act and a slew of electoral reforms, he said.
The law making it mandatory to print the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) on the product cover and consumer protection acts, setting up of a council between States, Bharat Ratna Award to B R Ambedkar and habitats for Delhi slum dwellers were also some of the other reforms that he brought in as Prime Minister, he said.
Singh’s revolutionary step on OBC reservation, taken against all odds and oppositions, however, had not yet helped the OBCs to get all the benefits as there was still no reservation for the UGC joint director, who invariably belonged to the general category, and educational institutions implemented OBC reservation only after 2006.
As a way of paying respect to leaders like Singh, people had to put in more toil to usher in reservation in higher judiciary and top jobs in the government, he said, adding that of the 89 secretaries in the Union Government, there was none from the OBC category with 85 belonging to the upper castes, three ST and one SC and among the 604 judicial appointments made between 2018 and 2023 only 72 went to OBC.
Reeling out more statistics on the caste break-up in the higher echelons of the administration, he said that of the 93 additional secretaries in the Union Government, 82 were from the upper castes with none for the OBC and of the 274 joint secretaries, only 19 belonged to OBC.
In 45 Central Universities, OBC professors formed only 4 per cent and in the student admissions to Central law universities in Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand reservation was not being followed even now, he said.
In its duty to uphold social justice, the DMK would never lag behind, he said giving details on the legal initiatives made by his government after coming to power that included securing admission for OBC candidates at the all-India admission for medical and dental courses through a Supreme Court order on July 27, 2021.
Besides appointing a committee to monitor social justice implementation in the State, the government had announced the birth anniversary of Periyar E V Ramasamy as Social Justice Day and that of B R Ambedkar as Equality Day and had been waging legal and democratic battles against NEET that had proved to be a major impediment on ushering in social justice, he said.
Singh considered Periyar as a great leader and described the self-respect that the Dravidian leader fought for as the panacea for humiliation, which was worse than death, and respected M Karunanidhi like a brother.
Singh had acknowledged the support he received from Karunanidhi by saying that he stood by him when most leaders of his own party had run away from him and had always acceded to the demands placed before him by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister like the one to name the domestic and international terminals at the Chennai airport from K Kamaraj and C N Annadurai by making instant efforts and at another time an effort to solve the Sri Lankan crisis, Stalin recalled.
On the occasion of the unveiling of the statue of Singh, it would be pertinent to take a pledge to turn the political action plans for the uplift of OBC, SC, ST, Minority and marginalized populations as government plans, he said and assured everyone that Tamil Nadu would never forget V P Singh even if everyone else did.
The plan to install the statue was first announced by Stalin in the State Assembly under Rule 110 and the project was implemented at a cost of Rs 52,20,000. Among those who attended the unveiling function were former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ahilesh Yadav, V P Singh’s wife Seetha Kumari, son Ajaya Singh and their family members.
