After three days of protest by the tribals at Udumalpet in Tirupur district, the protest has been called off. This resolution was achieved when the district forest rights committee held a meeting at the district collectorate and passed a resolution to construct the road.
Tirupur: The Anaimalai Tiger Reserve in Tirupur district has 18 hill villages, including Kulipatti, Gurumalai, Mavadappu, Thalinji, Kodanthur, and Kattupatti.
Over 3,000 hill people and their families dwell here. For many years, they have been denied basic necessities like education, roads, medical care, drinking water, and so forth. Last month, an old man who had become ill was tied to a cradle and carried several kilometres from the forest area for treatment.
While a resolution seeking road connectivity under the Forest Rights Act of 2006 was already passed at the district forest rights committee meeting, the project was not carried out because the forest department had not signed the resolution.
More than 500 people from the hill village, along with their children, staged a sit-in protest in front of the Udumalai forest range office in Udumalpet, demanding that the road be built despite the current urgent need.
In other districts of Tamil Nadu, essential services such as roads, drinking water, hospitals, and schools have been provided to tribal people living in forest areas. But only in the Anaimalai Tiger Reserve, they alleged that the forest department officials were blocking the concessions to them citing various procedures.
The tribals have been demonstrating for the third day in a row, asking that basic services such as roads, drinking water, education, and medical care be provided to them as envisaged in the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
Following this, a meeting was held at the Collectorate, presided over by District Collector Christuraj. The conference was presided over by Shanmugam, the state's tribal vice-president, tribals from Udumalpet, and the president and vice-president of the Thali town panchayat.
The district collector assured that the meeting will be converted into a district forest rights committee meeting and a resolution will be passed to take steps to construct the road when their demands were raised on behalf of the people in the talks.
Following this, a resolution was prepared and signed by the District Collector. This was followed by the signature of the forest department, which was not signatories in the last meeting, following the signature of revenue officials, district forest rights committee members and others. District Collector Christuraj assured the agitators that the next phase of work on the construction of the road will start as per the government rules.
Following this, they announced that the demonstration would be called off once their demands were met. Due to this, the three-day-long protest has been called off. On behalf of the Tribal People's Association and the Thali Town Panchayat administration, they thanked the District Collector for taking immediate steps to fulfil their long-standing demand in the talks.