JOIN USIn a big show of strength, thousands of DMK partymen and women cadres across Tamil Nadu courted arrest on Wednesday as part of their “jail bharo” agitation.
They were protesting against the ruling AIADMK’s alleged “oppressive actions” through indiscriminate arrests of DMK’s senior functionaries and detaining many of them under the draconian Goonda Act in pursuance of land grab cases against them.
The statewide stir, which was called by DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, was led in Chennai by DMK treasurer M K Stalin and MP Kanimozhi, who on Tuesday got permission from the Delhi Special Court to participate in the protest.
Across 32 districts, at each of their respective headquarters, local DMK bosses led their partymen in groups to court arrest since morning, shouting slogans against the ruling AIADMK. While Stalin led a group of supporters in his Kolathur constituency, Kanimozhi led another impressive group at Saidapet in south Chennai before courting arrest. Several DMK MPs including former ministers like T R Baalu and Dayanidhi Maran also courted arrest.
While some of the present DMK ministers in the UPA Cabinet, notably M K Alagiri, kept themselves out of the agitation, the party supremo Karunanidhi, General Secretary Prof K Anbazhagan and some others also did not join the agitation on Wednesday. Commenting on the stir, Karunanidhi said, “Our partymen got arrested in batches, if the need arises, I will be the last DMK man to get arrested.”
The octogenarian leader, speaking to reporters later, said the response from the DMK cadres “far exceeded the expectations”. “It is a big success,” he said, claiming that over one lakh DMK party cadres courted arrest throughout Tamil Nadu on Wednesday. But police sources, tabulating the figures till evening, were yet to give the total official figures.
Several other Opposition parties led by the CPI state secretary D Pandian slammed the DMK for launching an “agitation, merely to protect their party (DMK) and not for any public cause”.
Later in the evening, all the arrested DMK cadres and party functionaries under various IPC sections including unlawful assembly and posing threat to public peace through their jail-bharo agitation were released across the state.