Chennai, The bandh called by DMK-led opposition parties to condemn police firing at Tuticorin in which 13 people lost their lives and press for Chief Minister K Palaniswami’s resignation passed off peacefully today. Demonstrations by DMK, its allies Congress, IUML, MMK and other parties like MDMK, VCK, CPI, and CPI(M) were staged across Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Puducherry. State-run transport corporation buses, autos, taxis and trains operated as usual while banks, hotels, commercial establishments and markets were open.
Attendance in government and private establishments was normal, officials said. The bandh call, however, evoked good response in several regions falling under Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli districts, adjoining Tuticorin, besides Coimbatore, Tirupur and Tiruvarur. Though most shops, retail outlets and commercial establishments were closed in such regions, public transportation was not affected. In Tuticorin, no fresh violence was reported today and the port city appeared to limp back to normalcy with operation of buses to select destinations like Tirunelveli beginning today with police security. The vegetable market also opened. Prohibitory orders, however, continue to be in place.
In Congress-ruled Puducherry, normal life was hit. All shops and establishments, restaurants,cinema houses, vegetable and fish markets remained closed. Autos, private and Puducherry government run buses were off the roads. DMK Working President M K Stalin said such protests would continue till Palaniswami quits and demanded that government make an official announcement that the Sterlite plant would be shut permanently. Protests would be held till such an official declaration was made, he told reporters at a hall where he was lodged by police after he led a protest at Madurantakam in Kancheepuram district. He alleged that those in the AIADMK government were “bribed”, vis-a-vis the Sterlite row.
Hitting out at the AIADMK regime, Stalin said he and his party colleagues went to the Secretariat yesterday to lay siege to the chief minister’s office. “We were there to tell the Chief Minister to quit his office and go home and not to give any petitions,” he said. Violent protests erupted in Tuticorin on Tuesday as locals took to the streets demanding closure of a copper factory of the Vedanta group over pollution concerns. The Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly claimed that it was the protest led by him that goaded Chief Minister Palaniswami to break his silence on Thursday on the Tuticorin violence. Referring to a case filed against him for defying prohibitory orders, Stalin said his partymen had faced several cases and were not afraid of going to jail for people’s cause. He demanded a probe by a sitting judge of the High Court into the violence and said his party cannot agree on the inquiry by a retired judge (Aruna Jagadeesan) which the government had announced on May 23.