Kallakurichi hooch tragedy: T.N. CM Stalin or Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin can visit hamlets around Kalvarayan hills, says Madras High Court

Madras High Court urges Chief Minister or Sports Minister to address poverty-driven spurious liquor sales in tribal hamlets.

The Madras High Court on Wednesday, July 24, 2024 said that either Chief Minister M.K. Stalin or Sports Development and Youth Welfare Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin can visit the hamlets around the Kalvarayan hills in parts of Salem and Kallakurichi districts and take stock of complaints of people selling spurious liquor due to poverty.

A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and C. Kumarappan passed an interim order requesting Advocate General P.S. Raman to apprise the Chief Minister, the Sports Minister and Adi Dravidar Welfare Minister N. Kayalvizhi Selvaraj about the situation prevailing in Kalvarayan hills so that they could visit the hamlets.

The judges said that only a visit either by the Chief Minister or the Ministers could ensure provision of immediate succour such as electricity, drinking water, education to children in the tribal hamlets and also long term solutions such as providing employment opportunities by promoting tourism or through other avenues.

The observations were made during the hearing of a suo motu public interest litigation petition taken up by the Division Bench, after the recent Kallakurichi hooch tragedy that claimed over 66 lives, to improve the livelihood of the tribes who were supposedly selling spurious liquor due to lack of other means to make ends meet. 

Justice Subramaniam said, the Chief Minister must be apprised of the fact that the erstwhile Vizayanagaram emperor Krishna Devaraya had gifted hundreds of villages in the then South Arcot and Salem districts to the ancestors of three Malayali tribe Jagirdhars -- Sadaya Goundan, Kurumba Goundan and Arya Goundan. 

Areas gifted to the first two Jagirdhars (mini rulers) fell under the present Kallakurichi district and the rest in Salem district. The gifted land measured roughly about 1,000 sq.km., and three Jagirdhars had refused to join the territory of India till the declaration of Emergency in the country. It was only on June 25, 1976 that they were forced to hand over the areas to the then South Arcot Collector.

“The Chief Minister must be informed that the first ever elections in these hamlets were held only in 1996. We don’t know what the political parties in the State were doing till then. Even now amicus curiae K.R. Tamilmani states that pregnant women in the hamlets have to be carried on shoulders for about 30 to 40 km to reach the main road,” the judge told the A-G.