CHENNAI, JUNE 15: Stepping up its campaign against the DMK regime in Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK, desperate to oust the Karunanidhi government from office, today sent thousands of its cadre out into the streets to protest its alleged `anti-farmer policies' by holding rallies and demonstrations in all districts barring Chennai.With the police making elaborate security arrangements and effecting hundreds of preventive arrests, the agitation, the first major opposition stir since the ruling DMK-led Front's electoral debacle in the Lok Sabha polls, passed off peacefully without any untoward incidents.Karunanidhi's apprehension that AIADMK might foment violence in its bid to weaken his government, and counter-charges by AIADMK supremo and former chief minister Jayalalitha that the police may be used to instigate violence and shift the blame onto the AIADMK did not come true.In Madurai, party deputy general secretary K Kalimuthu led a rally and, in his address, warned that the AIADMK would ``wage a battle'' toget the DMK government dismissed, if its demands on the farmers' issues were not met.Though the rally was to highlight the government's ``indifference'' towards farmers, the ``oust-the-regime'' slogans stood out. Leaders who addressed rallyists harped more on the dismissal theme than on farmers' issues.The demands of the demonstrators, who presented memoranda to district collectors after holding rallies, included measures to ensure unhindered power supply to farmers, fixation of sugarcane procurement price at Rs 1000 per tonne and refund of land revenue already collected from farmers but covered by a waiver announced recently.Jayalalitha has alleged that the waiver of land revenue, worth Rs 44 crore, announced by the government was only a drama, as 75 per cent of the revenue arrears had already been forcibly collected through threat of distraint proceedings. The government has explained that the land revenue already collected would be adjusted against next year's revenue payments.To counter the chargethat it is indifferent towards the problems of farmers, the Karunanidhi government has come out with newspaper advertisements highlighting its `manifold welfare measures'.Besides continuing the free power supply to irrigation pump sets and the land tax waiver, the government had announced a sizeable state advised price for sugarcane which was well above the statutory minimum price fixed by the centre, and sanctioned huge relief amounts for farmers hit by floods in 1996 and 1997, it said.
