TMC cadres to be released today

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, SEPT. 28. All the TMC partymen and volunteers who had been remanded to judicial custody yesterday following their attempt to picket government offices in different parts of the State would be released tomorrow, the Chief Minister, Mr. M. Karunanidhi, today said, even while denying the TMC president, Mr. G.K. Moopanar's charge that the Government had downscaled the arrest figures.

Sticking to the official figures that in all 12,200 TMC party cadres and volunteers had been initially arrested, Mr. Karunanidhi told reporters here that excluding those who ``dispersed while being taken for remand,'' the total number of persons remanded was 9,500 including 300 women.

Of this, about 2,000 had come out on bail so far amidst reports that those TMC men arrested in places such as Thanjavur were arguing their bail applications, he said. However, all those from TMC lodged in various jails would be let off tomorrow, besides the CPI(M) volunteers who had been arrested for their agitation to highlight farmers issues, he said to a query.

Wondering how the TMC's claim that one lakh partymen had courted arrest of whom 80,000 had been remanded to custody could be true, Mr. Karunanidhi said there were nine large prisons in Tamil Nadu, which at present housed about 17,000 inmates.

``For the TMC to say that the Government has remanded an additional 80,000 yesterday sounds ludicrous,'' Mr. Karunanidhi said. Equally ``comic'' was TMC men including prominent functionaries preferring bail applications when their declared intention was to ``fill the jails,'' Mr. Karunanidhi observed.

TMC denial

Reacting to the Chief Minister's taunts, the TMC president, Mr. Moopanar said that if the Government had adopted a ``fair policy'' of arresting all the TMC volunteers who had turned up in large numbers for the stir, the TMC would not have moved bail applications for the remanded partymen.

However, the arrests were discriminatory and the police chose to remand only a few while the other volunteers were forcibly asked to leave, he said. ``For the same offence some are remanded and others are let off. Is this a fair policy?'' he asked.

Refuting the Chief Minister's charge that the TMC was trying to entice the ``MGR votebank'' of the AIADMK, Mr. Moopanar said the sole aim of the stir was to press the 15-point charter of demands concerning the farmers and the poor. However, he said, the agitation had provided an answer to all those who dubbed and taunted the TMC as a ``weak'' party. The TMC leader said he would undertake a tour of the districts to thank the partymen who had given a ``re sounding response'' to his call for the stir.

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