Chennai: The Madras High Court has accepted the plea of the Tamil Nadu government in the case of Pongal gift package and adjourned the case till next Monday.
On the occasion of Pongal festival in Tamil Nadu, Tamil Nadu Government used to give Pongal gift package containing green rice, jaggery, sugarcane etc. to the family card holders.
In this case, the Tamil Nadu government announced on December 22 that for the upcoming Pongal festival, along with one thousand rupees, rice and sugar will be given as Pongal gift packages. Many parties are protesting that sugarcane is not included in this gift package, which will be distributed from the first week of January. Meanwhile, Radhakrishnan, a farmer from Madanagopalapuram in Cuddalore district, has filed a case in the Madras High Court seeking an order to the Tamil Nadu government to consider giving sugarcane as a Pongal gift.
In his petition, he mentioned that he cultivated sugarcane in the hope that the government would purchase sugarcane at a good price for the Pongal gift package. But since sugarcane is not included in the Pongal gift package, they have to sell it at a low price, and because of this, the families of sugarcane farmers are not in a position to celebrate Pongal with satisfaction, he said.
Since the Pongal festival and sugarcane cannot be separated, he submitted a petition to the government on December 24 requesting to provide sugarcane along with the Pongal gift package and requested that it be ordered to consider it. When the case came up for hearing before Justices CV Karthikeyan and SS Soundar, Additional Chief Advocate J. Ravindran appeared for the Tamil Nadu government and requested that the case be adjourned to Monday. The judge accepted it and adjourned the hearing of the case to next Monday (January 2).