On December 16, DMK sympathizers on Twitter started a tirade against Superstar Rajinikanth saying that the actor-politician had not paid the rental dues to the owner of the land on which The Ashram School run by his wife Mrs. Latha Rajinikanth is located.
It came in the light of media reports about the Madras High Court stating that Mrs. Latha Rajinikanth could face contempt proceedings if the education society in which she is the secretary, fails to vacate the premises by April 2021.
The Ashram School run by Sree Raghavendra Educational Society is located in Guindy, Chennai. In 2014, the land owners – Venkateswaralu and Poornachandra Rao filed a case in the Madras High Court seeking an order to pay rent arrears till March 2013. On August 16, 2017, the school gate were closed suddenly as the issue saw no closure. Students studying in the school were shifted to another branch of the school. However, the school was following a High Court order in 2017.
On August 3, 2018, the school management and the land owners had reached an amicable settlement and it was decided that they would vacate the premises by April 3, 2020.
However, the premises could not be vacated as planned due to the outbreak of Wuhan virus and the ensuing nationwide lockdown which has resulted in non-completion of the current academic year. An affidavit was filed before the High Court citing the above reasons and seeking extension of time to vacate the premises to April 2021. In response to this, the High Court had stated that Mrs. Latha Rajinikanth could face contempt proceedings if the educaation society failed to vacate the premises before April next year.
On December 16, Sree Raghavendra Educational Society issued a press release clarifying on the matter and denied reports of contempt proceedings against its secretary Mrs. Latha Rajinikanth.
“This is to clarify that we had filed an application along with the affidavit before the Hon’ble High Court seeking to extend the time to vacate the premises as we were not able to vacate the premises in view of the outbreak of Covid-19 and further as the current academic year was not completed. In addition to the above and also keeping the interest of teachers, students and non-teaching staff, time was sought to vacate the school premises till April 2021 and we also informed the Hon’ble High Court that there were no arrears of Rent and TDS, and the same was being periodically paid,”, the press release read.
The statement said that the court accepted the submissions made by Mrs. Latha Rajinikanth’s side and granted time till April 2021. It also said that the Court had restrained the institution from admitting students for the next academic year only for the current premises and did not put any restrictions for its new campus.
However, stories carried by newspapers like The Hindu (reported by Senior Assistant Editor Mohamed Imranullah) and a section of Tamil news channels and social media put out misleading headlines which became a fodder for the DMK sympathizers.
The hashtag #வாடகைஎங்கேரஜினி (Where is the rent Rajini?) started gaining traction on Twitter.But with the clarification coming from Mrs. Latha Rajinikanth’s side, the tirade went bust.
But the matter did not end there. Netizens and Rajini supporters raked up the issue of DMK’s mouthpiece Murasoli Trust office allegedly squatting on a Panchami land (land which was distributed for Scheduled Caste communities in Tamil Nadu during the British rule in 1892).
The hashtag #வாடகைஇங்கே_மூலபத்திரம்எங்கே is now trending nationwide with more than a 100K tweets.
DMK President MK Stalin who is the managing director of Murasoli Trust found himself in soup after PMK founder leader Dr. Ramadoss questioned if the office of the DMK mouthpiece is illegally squatting on Panchami land when the former commented after watching the Tamil film Asuran. Since then, many from different quarters have asked the DMK chief to come out clean on the matter by showing the Moolapathiram (mother document) that establishes that the office does not squat on Panchami land.
