Dalit Panchayat Chief In Tamil Nadu Village Forced To Sit On Floor, Secretary Suspended

At a time when the nation is calling out caste-based discrimination, erupting in mass protests, another such incident has come out in public light.

Rajeshwari Saravana Kumar, president of TherkuThittai Panchayat, a village near Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, belonging to the Scheduled Caste (Dalit), was forced to sit on the floor during panchayat meetings. S Rajeswari has alleged that she was made to sit on the floor during meetings of the panchayat board by the vice-president ever since she was elected to the post in January this year.

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Photos of panchayat chief sitting on floor went viral

As photos of Rajeshwari sitting on the floor while members of village panchayat sitting on chairs went viral on social media, the district police swung into action on Saturday.

The panchayat secretary has now been suspended after the president of the panchayat filed a complaint on Saturday morning. A case under various sections of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act has been filed against vice-president Mohanrajan and the panchayat secretary Sindhuja, who has been placed under suspension.

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Village dominated by non-marginalised Vanniyar community

Rajeswari said the vice-president never allowed her to discharge her duties as the president and even prevented her from hoisting the national flag on the Independence Day.

Only 250 kms from capital city Chennai and 40 kms from the town of Cuddalore, the village of Therkuthittai is dominated by the Vanniyars. The Vanniyar, typically not a marginalised community, and vastly comprising of traditional agricultural laborers formerly known as the Palli, are a community found in northern Tamil Nadu, southern Andhra Pradesh and in southern Karnataka.

The village consists of around 500 families who are mostly Vanniyars and 100 households from the SC community. The panchayat is reserved for SC community. Rajeswari¡¯s husband Saravanakumar said the family did not muster the courage to speak out again...

This comes two months after a panchayat president in Tiruvallur district near Chennai was not allowed to unfurl the national flag on the occasion of Independence Day. However, V Amurtham, president of Aathupaakam village, hoisted the tricolour five days later upon the intervention of the district administration.