By IANS,
Chennai : With their livelihood lost due to a court order shutting down 729 dyeing units, dyers and owners in Tirupur hit upon a novel idea to draw attention to their plight: Fight the Tamil Nadu assembly polls as independents. But with major political parties extending support to their cause, the Tirupur Industrial Protection Committee (TIPC) has asked its 140 “friends and well-wishers” to withdraw from the race.
“We have succeeded in our mission of drawing the nation’s attention to our plight. For the past two days, many political parties have assured us that our issue will be taken up after the assembly polls,” TIPC coordinator R. Annadurai told IANS on the phone from Tirupur, around 380 km from here.
The Madras High Court had ordered the closure of dyeing units on a petition filed by a farmers’ association complaining about pollution of Noyal river water and their farm lands due to the effluents discharged from the units.
Annadurai said leaders of the DMK and the AIADMK, the two major parties in the state, met TIPC members and assured their support in solving the problem.
“We have now decided to request our friends and well wishers to withdraw their nominations filed for the Tirupur North constituency. A total of 140 nominations were filed by our friends and well wishers,” he said.
According to Annadurai, as Tirupur North has 250,000 voters, around 100,000 voters more than Tirupur South seat, it was decided to file nominations there.
A total of 152 nominations have been filed for the Tirupur North constituency, of which 145 are by independents.
The newly-formed TIPC decided to protest in a novel way as it found none of the political parties in the state showed interest in solving their problem after the Madras High Court ordered the closure, affecting the livelihood of around 72,000 workers.
“The dyeing units want the government to run the effluent treatment plants and they are willing to pay the necessary charges,” Annadurai said.
According to him, the industry collectively invested around Rs.800 crore on an effluent treatment system that initially promised zero discharges but this failed.
“The technology failed and it is a sunk investment for us,” he said.