Tamil Nadu

CPI seeks pattas for the poor within a timeframe

— PHOTO: S. JAMES

WARNING TO GOVERNMENT: CPI workers, led by party leader D. Pandian (centre), staging a demonstration in Madurai on Thursday.

CHENNAI: Volunteers of the Communist Party of India on Thursday staged demonstrations throughout the State demanding free house site pattas for the poor.

Demonstrations were organised in four places in Chennai and in all district and taluk headquarters.

CPI State secretary D. Pandian , who led the demonstration in Madurai, said it was the duty of the Government to provide shelter to those living below the poverty line. The State should take immediate steps to distribute pattas to the poor to enable them to construct houses.

He warned that people living without shelter would not remain passive for long and might take drastic steps.

The party also warned of forcibly taking over poromboke land and distributing it among the shelterless, if the Government did not fulfil its promise of giving free house sites to the poor within a timeframe. The Government should not think that the party would just give petitions, raise slogans and go away.

Stating that the country-wide protest, held simultaneously in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, was not a decision taken in haste, he said, “Over 20 crore poor in the country do not have a house and they have waited for 60 years after Independence”. The Government was showing keen interest in acquiring thousands of acres for business houses, he said. Maintaining that the Tamil Nadu Government had promised to distribute land to the landless and give pattas, he said it was not possible as it was dependent on officials. “We have seen the officials over the years and are frustrated and lost our hope.”

R. Nallakannu, national executive committee member, led the demonstrators in Ambattur, S.S. Thiagarajan, State unit secretary of the AITUC, in Perambur, and A.M. Gopu, national council member, in Tondiarpet.

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