Tamil issue: Tamil Nadu on boil, hundreds of colleges shut

20 March, 2013

Once again, protests over Sri Lankan Tamil issue gained momentum and this time the student groups are also actively involved. This time around, one crore students are participating in the protest, and the state government has ordered to shut down 525 engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University and even the hosteliers have been asked to vacate the hostels.

The student groups are holding a series of protests including hunger strike. The anti-Sri Lankan protest has reached the top institutes of the company this time, and the IIT Madras campus swelled to new proportions, agitations, class boycotts and rallies. Several other private colleges are lending their support to the protest.

Many students from SRM Easwari Engineering College, Anna University’s School of Architecture and Planning and AC Tech in Chennai have held demonstrations and rallies on this issue. Medical college students in Trichy and Engineering college students in Madurai also held a rally and road blockades. Around 600 students and 250 girls of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore also joined the protest.

Dinesh, the coordinator of Federation of Students for Liberation of Tamil Eelam, said students will boycott classes and that they planned to rope in their counterparts from schools also. The students said they were upset by the State government’s move to dilute their democratic means of protest by shutting down colleges, reported truthdive.

The film fraternity of Kollywood has expressed solidarity with the student community. Meanwhile, the wholesale vegetable supplier to Chennai, the Koyambedu Market down shuttered on 19 March 2013 to express solidarity with the Sri Lankan Tamils.