‘State’s rights over River South Pennar should be safeguarded’

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has condemned the alleged illegal pumping of water from River South Pennar to Malur taluk in Kolar district by the Karnataka Government.

As many as 500 DMK cadre, led by T. Senguttuvan, district secretary and Member of Legislative Assembly representing Veppanahalli constituency, staged a demonstration to protect the livelihood of farmers in Krishnagiri on Wednesday.

Mr. Senguttuvan alleged that the Karnataka government had launched a scheme to pump water from South Pennar with a view to fill up 130 lakes in Kolar district for irrigation. If the project takes off in full swing, five districts including Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, Tiruvannamalai, Cuddalore and Villupuram would be affected. The protesters demanded that the government intervene in the issue and save the interest of the farmers in the five districts.

Mr. Senguttuvan said that the Karnataka government had violated the two agreements signed between the States during 1892 and 1933 which stated that without the consent of Tamil Nadu no new water scheme would be implemented.

As per the agreement, four dams — Barur, Kodiyalam, KRP and Kelevarapalli — were constructed. After that check dams were also built by the government at Aliyalam, Subagiri, Ennakkopudur and Eachambadi.

The River South Pennar was the main source for irrigating over 25,000 acres in Krishnagiri district. E.G. Sugavanam, youth wing deputy secretary, B.V. Venkatasamy, former MLA, among others participated.

Fire in Paint Shop

A paint shop here was partially damaged in a fire that broke out early on Thursday.

Fire and Rescue personnel extinguished the fire after nearly an hour. People saw smoke billowing out from shop at around 4.30 a.m. and informed the police and the Fire and Rescue Department.

The shop is functioning from a two-storeyed building owned by Krubakaran, a businessman, on the Old Bengaluru Road.

The shop had stocks of chemicals and paints.The fire was controlled before it spread to the first floor and the nearby cement godown.

Krishnagiri town police have registered a case and are investigating.

Six injured in Mariamman temple group clash in Avadanapatti

Personnel from Rapid Action Force posted in Avadanapatti

Six persons including three priests of a Mariamman temple in Avadanapatti near Krishnagiri were injured in a clash between two groups of a community over conducting pooja at the temple on Tuesday evening. The police took into custody 12 persons in this connection.

Deputy Superintendent of Police M. Santhanapandian said that a group of people had gone to the temple to offer ragi koozh and insisted that persons from their group should be allowed to do the pooja.

As this was opposed by the other group, a clash erupted between them. In the melee, three priests and three persons from the other group sustained injuries. They were rushed to the Government Headquarters Hospital and the Government Hospital in Kaveripattinam. The police arrested six persons each from both the groups.

The police personnel have been posted in and around the temple to avoid further clash. The Avadanapatti police registered a case and are investigating.

‘Small industries face investment constraints’

Many participants from food processing industries

A workshop on efficient resource management strategies for food processing industries was held in Krishnagiri recently.

The workshop was organised jointly by the Krishmaa Cluster Development Society and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Over fifty members, mostly from food processing and allied industries in and around Krishnagiri participated in the workshop. Collector T.P. Rajesh inaugurated the workshop in the presence of Lead District Bank Manager D. Krishnadoss.

V.N. Shiju, Managing Director, Cape Inde Value Chain gave a presentation on ‘Managing our business without expensive ERPs’.

During his presentation, Mr. Shiju said that small businesses have constraints on the amount that they can invest on sophisticated and expensive IT infrastructure like enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM).

Also in the current scenario, it is difficult to evaluate and implement the right IT solution for a company.

This session would educate participants on the essential analyses and reports that can be done on a day-to-day basis through simple calculations.

He also introduced the participants to some simple Excel-based tools.

Ananth Palaniappan, Managing Partner, Hash Management Services LLP gave a presentation on ‘Improving your productivity’.

“A love affair is the reason for denial of work to Dalits”

R. Arivanantham (The Hindu)

Over 300 Dalit families of Deveerahalli Village, of

Kudimenahalli Panchayat, in Krishnagiri district allege that they are being denied work by intermediate castes of the village and of six other nearby villages. The reason behind this, they say, is that a Dalit youth in their area had fallen in love with a girl of an intermediate caste from Sathinayakkanpatti under Damodarahalli Panchayat.

The girl is back with her parents after the youth’s parents wanted her to go back, as they feared the type of mob fury which was unleashed on three colonies in nearby Dharmapuri district, over a similar issue in November last year. But, the boycott of the Dalits of the Krishnagiri village continues though the affair had come to light in December and the girl had gone back to her home.

Intermediate castes have banned Dalits from working on their agriculture fields, brick kilns and other income-earning activities since then. The decision to bar them from such forms of employment was allegedly taken by a ‘khap panchayat’ — a council of older persons who issue decrees to their community members on matters such as marriage — consisting of the leaders of seven villages, in and around Sathinayakkanpatti and Deevarahalli, on December 24 last year, alleged A. Manikandan, district convener of Naam Tamizhar Katchi.

Many Dalits, who have also taken up the lands of intermediate caste on lease, for cultivation of crops, lost lakhs of rupees due to the economic boycott. They were not allowed to step into the farm lands. M. Kumar (37), who is District president of HIV Positive Network, said, “After the incident in December, the neighbouring landowner refused to give water for irrigating my ragi crop, cultivated on half an acre. I was forced to buy water from another village and bring it by tractors to save my crop’’. S. Salamma (45) of Deveerapalli village says she has two young sons to take care of. As her husband, a daily wage earner, has been rendered jobless because of the boycott, the family is totally dependent on the earnings from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) works and the free rice distributed through the public distribution system.

M. Chitra (30), mother of two male children, said, “There is no discrimination at the MGNREGS worksite, but the intermediate castes stopped speaking to us after the order of the khap panchayat”.

The decision taken at the khap panchayat allegedly ordered that Dalits should not be employed under the MGNREGS also. But, it was rejected by the village panchayat president K. Murugesan. Himself a member of an intermediate caste, he told the village leaders that he could not indulge in discrimination as the head of a local body. The parents of the youth and the girl could not be contacted for their comments. 

X. Irudayaraj, District Secretary, Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front, and G. Sekar, District Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist), added the police and revenue authorities should take action against those indulging in the boycott of Dalits, which denied them livelihood.

Stating that his inquiry found a boycott of the Dalits, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Bargur, G. Gajendran said, on Saturday, that he would conduct a meeting between the Dalits and caste-Hindus. As for the love affair, Mr. Gajendran said that even before a formal complaint was lodged by the girl’s family, a police team visited the village and took all possible measures to prevent any untoward incident, and the girl returned to her parents.

12 hurt as bus falls into gorge

A private bus rolled down a 100-feet-deep gorge while negotiating a sharp curve on a hill road near Veppanahalli in Krishnagiri district on Thursday.

The bus was on its way to Krishnagiri from Berigai. Police sources said that 12 people were injured in the accident. They were taken to the Government Headquarters Hospital in Krishnagiri.

Man killed in accident; people stage road roko

Seeking action:Village people staged a road blockade in Samalpallam on the Hosur-Krishnagiri National Highway after a man was killed by a hit-and-run vehicle on Wednesday night.-Photo: Special Arrangement

Villagers blocked traffic on the Hosur-Krishnagiri National Highway after a man was killed in a hit-and-run accident near Samalpallam village on Wednesday night.

People pelted stones on an ambulance, a government bus, a police vehicle and some private vehicles, damaging window panes. About ten passengers in the bus received minor injuries.

Three Deputy Superintendents of Police and a Tahsildar held talks with the agitators, who demanded that a flyover be constructed in the area, which they claimed was accident-prone. They lifted the blockade after an hour and a half.

Police took the body of the deceased, Govindaraj of Mallasandiram village, to the Government Taluk Hospital in Hosur for post mortem examination. Shoolagiri police have arrested ten persons in connection with the stone-pelting and road blockade.