THE political campaign of the Peoples’ Welfare Front – the alternative alliance comprising the MDMK, CPI(M), CPI and VCK – has entered the fourth phase.

All the four phases of the campaign have reflected a sense of camaraderie and enthusiasm.

Going to the assembly polls on May 16, Tamilnadu may have to face a six cornered contest.

The ruling AIADMK is mired in infighting. This, according to political observers in the state, may erode the huge support base of the Party. For the past one week, the AIADMK supremo and chief minister Jayalalithaa was compulsively spending time to meet some smaller parties in order to keep its base intact. However, many parties which met the CM are just ‘letter pad parties’ aiming to gain some ‘crores’ from the AIADMK.

The same is the case with the DMK. It has sealed an electoral alliance with its counterpart in corruption, the Congress party. It had waited for joining hands with the DMDK of Vijayakant, actor turned politician. But he refused after long parleys to join the DMK alliance. He announced to go it alone. However, the BJP is trying to woo the DMDK, assuring him that it will accept Vijayakant’s aspirations to become the CM of the state. The BJP is still standing lonely.

PMK, a casteist party is focusing Anbumani Ramdoss as CM candidate, and is going it alone. Corrupt Anbumani and his father Dr Ramdoss are exposing themselves in front of the people of the state.

In this background, the one and only force that is Peoples’ Welfare Front (PWF), engineered by the CPI(M)and coordinated by Vaiko with its common minimum programme, has proudly finished its four phases of campaign covering 22 districts including  the major cities and towns like Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Dindigul, Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Tanjavur, Cuddalore, Verllore, Thiruvannamalai and Dharmapuri.

The campaign met lakhs and lakhs of peoples for the past one month. The media, which tried to ignore the massive turnout for the public meetings of the PWF, are now compelled to cover the meetings and the speeches of the leaders Vaiko, G Ramakrishnan, R Mutharasan and Thol Thirmavalavan as the electoral trends of Tamilnadu are veering towards the PWF.

With this spirit, thousands and thousands of cadres of the four parties are prepared in full swing to fight it and win the fight.

CPI(M) Demands Enacting a Separate Law

To Prevent Honour Killings

“LET my son be the last victim of honour killing in Tamilnadu,” says daily-wage earner C Velusamy (47) of Komaralingam near Udumalpet in Tiruppur district, Tamilnadu. His son V Sankar (22) was hacked to death while the latter’s wife was also brutally injured in an attack near the Udumalpet bus stand on March 14.

In a clear case of honour killing, a three-member gang that came on a motorcycle attacked V Sankar (22) and his wife S Kausalya (19), with lethal weapons. While Sankar died on the way to the hospital, his wife who suffered brutal injury was admitted to the Coimbatore Government Hospital.

Relatives of the girl who had opposed her marriage with the dalit youth were involved in the incident.

The gruesome daylight attack was captured on a surveillance camera installed in the locality. Local people even took pictures (on mobile phones) of the suspects escaping on the motorcycle leaving the victims in a pool of blood.

Sankar, a native of Kumaralingam near Udumalpet, and Kausalya, a native of Palani in Dindigul district, were students of a private engineering college in Pollachi where they met and fell in love. The couple got married a few months ago against the wishes of the girl’s family.

On the fateful day, he went to Udumalpet with his wife S Kausalya (19) to buy new clothes for his farewell function in the college on the next day. “Nobody guessed that it would be the last day of his life,” Sankar’s brother Vigneshwaran (19), a second year B.Sc. computer science student in a college at Udumalpet, said.

Sankar and Kausalya were married eight months ago. Shankar’s family came to know about their marriage only when the couple approached the Udumalpet All Women Police Station about seven months ago seeking protection, following threats.

It is learnt that Sankar also got placed in campus recruitment in a firm in Chennai, and was supposed to join after his final semester exams. He wanted to help his wife complete her degree and support his other school-going younger brother to pursue higher education.

The girl’s family had come to his house twice and asked her to return home or face dire consequences. The victim’s relatives and friends used to escort the couple when they went out of the village, fearing attacks by the girl’s family. But since there were no threats of late, they started going out without the escort, which helped the assailants.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and People’s Welfare Front vehemently condemned the killing and came to streets as the ruling AIADMK and DMK have not even condemned the attack. CPI(M) state secretary G Ramakrishnan urged the government to enact a separate law to prevent honour killings.

Honour killing is not the only threat that is affected by caste Hindus on their daughters and their dalit husbands. While the number of such incidents is more in the southern districts, it is quite rare in the western region. But, there are a number of incidents in the recent years where inter-caste love and marriage involving a dalit boy and caste Hindu girl have triggered unrest.

One of the recent incidents in this region that one would not forget was the ordeal over the marriage of dalit youth Elavarasan with Divya in which the houses of dalits in Elavarasan’s village in Dharmapuri were torched. The youth was found dead near a railway track under suspicious circumstances on July 4, 2013. Then there was the murder of dalit youth Gokulraj in Namakkal on June 24, 2015.