| Police refuse nod for MK’s Eelam meeting |
CHENNAI In a setback to Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) chief M Karunanidhi, police have refused permission to the controversial Tamil Eelam Supporters Organisation (Teso) meet on Sri Lankan Tamils called by him on Sunday.
The police action came hours after the federal government and the Jayalalithaa government raised certain objections in the Madras High Court on Friday particularly to the use of the word ‘Eelam’ (separate home land for Tamils) in the meet’s title.
Police have denied permission on various grounds which cannot be divulged as the matter was sub-judice, Chennai Police Commissioner JK Tripathy said.
Later a single judge of Madras High Court declined to hear a plea by Teso, challenging the ban.
Putting up a brave face, the 88-year old DMK patriarch, who is trying to resuscitate the defunct Tamil Eelam Supporters Organisation floated by him in the 80s, said all legal steps would be taken for holding the meet as scheduled.
Karunanidhi, who went into a huddle with his senior party colleagues to discuss the police action, said the police commissioner’s order mentioned they had information that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) activists and other extremist organisations might take part in the meet but dismissed their apprehension as “totally untrue”.
Eelam signifies the separate nationhood concept from Sri Lanka, the core of armed struggle by the now decimated LTTE, which is not in consonance with India’s stand on the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka.
Karunanidhi had formed Teso in the wake of murderous attacks on minority Tamils in Sri Lanka in the 80s and revived it recently in the backdrop of war crime charges against the island nation during its battle against LTTE in 2009.
Controversy has hit the pro-Eelam meet with Congress, a key ally of DMK in the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), dissociating itself from it while Karunanidhi himself had done flip-flops after first stating that the meet would adopt a resolution on Eelam only to clarify it would discuss steps for the livelihood of Tamils.
The external affairs ministry in a letter to Teso had said it had no objection to the meet from “political angle” but with a rider that the word “Eelam” may be dropped from the title of the conference, expected to be attended by several Sri Lankan Tamil leaders.
However, the DMK chief has denied receiving any such directive by the Teso, which had requested political clearance for the conference from the ministry of external affairs.
The federal government had also told the high court that it would not allow the organisers, including DMK, to use the word ‘Eelam’ in the heading of the international conference, while the state government said it may deny permission for the event as the venue was not big enough to accommodate the number of people expected to attend it.
Agencies
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