TVK’s SIR contradiction: Ally CPI’s youth, student wing cadres held in anti-CEC stir

In a continuation of the TVK government’s questionable stand on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls amid its allies’ joint opposition to it, Chennai Police arrested over 100 members of the All India Students’ Federation (AISF) and the All India Youth Federation (AIYF) on Saturday (October 10).

The two organisations—the student wing and the youth wing of the CPI, respectively—were leading a march demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar when they were arrested. The Communist Party of India (CPI) provides outside support to the TVK government in Tamil Nadu.

Leftist activists arrested

More than 100 AISF and AIYF cadres led by AIYF state secretary K Bharathi and AISF state president K Ibrahim attempted to march from the Periyar statue on Anna Salai to the Tamil Nadu Secretariat and lay siege to the Chief Electoral Officer’s office. Police stopped the procession on Sivananda Salai and made mass arrests. During a scuffle, one protester reportedly suffered a head injury and was hospitalized.

Also read: LIVE updates from Jantar Mantar protests

All these happened in Chennai when Delhi Police were cracking down on Leftist leaders and student activists during a protest on the same issue at Jantar Mantar called by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP). In Chennai too, around 30 to 50 members of the CJP were reportedly detained by Chennai Police near Elliot’s Beach in Besant Nagar while they were trying to hold a solidarity protest for the Delhi protesters.

Vijay’s vague equations

The TVK has drawn severe flak for its opposition to the SIR protests against CEC Kumar even though its ally Congress has been at the forefront of it. The Tamil Nadu government has not shied away from making arrests of its own ally members even while claiming that it had been opposed to the SIR process since the beginning.

Protesting against the SIR process has been tricky for the TVK because after this mammoth and dubious electoral exercise, it came to power in Tamil Nadu, albeit with support, at the expense of the two Dravidian giants, DMK and AIADMK, after decades.

Also read: CPM takes centre stage at CJP’s anti-CEC protests; police action shifts focus

At the same time, Chief Minister Joseph Vijay has repeatedly drawn flak over his ambiguous equation with the BJP, as he recently wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking that the Chennai airport be handed over to a “more competent” private player instead of the Airports Authority of India, only to retract his decision like a lot of others that attracted criticism.