When The Commune published its investigation into the Chennai Salesian Provincial’s alleged political collusion with the ruling DMK in October 2025, it triggered an immediate response from the Salesian Curia in Rome. Five months later, the ripples appear to have reached the Tamil Nadu Government Gazette itself.
The Commune’s report, published on 12 October 2025, had detailed allegations by R. Joseph D’ Kennedy, a Don Bosco alumnus and India Representative of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), against Fr. L. Don Bosco, the Provincial of the Chennai Salesian congregation. The report accused the Provincial of political collusion with the DMK, canonical violations, and the misuse of Don Bosco school premises for partisan political meetings. Rome responded within days. Now, on 2 March 2026, the Tamil Nadu government has published an Extraordinary Gazette notification, G.O.Ms.No.51, School Education (MS), that formally prohibits exactly the kind of conduct The Commune first brought to public attention.
What the Gazette Says
The new sub-rule 35(3) inserted into the Rules is categorical: the land, buildings, and facilities of every recognised private school shall be used exclusively for academic instruction, co-curricular activities, and school functions conducted under the authority of the educational agency.
Sub-rule 35(4) goes further, explicitly prohibiting school premises from being used, whether during or outside school hours, for any programme, meeting, campaign, or activity that is political or ideological in nature, communal or divisive, or otherwise unrelated to the school’s educational objectives.
Even cultural and social service events now require prior government approval and must be explicitly non-political and non-sectarian.
The Commune’s Expose: What Was Reported
The Commune’s original investigation was among the first mainstream reports to document in detail the dual role played by Fr. L. Don Bosco – as head of the Chennai Salesian Province and as a sitting member of the Tamil Nadu Minority Commission, a position allegedly gifted by the DMK as part of a political arrangement. The report cited a January 2024 article in Kumudham Reporter that described his inclusion in the Commission as part of a “political understanding” – a potential violation of Canon 285 §3, which prohibits clerics from holding civil offices.
Most strikingly, The Commune reported that Don Bosco school campuses had been used for DMK political meetings. Over 2,000 Greater Chennai Corporation sanitation workers, staging protests against the privatisation of waste management, alleged that DMK meetings were held inside Don Bosco school premises, after which workers were reportedly forced to clean the venues under pressure from civic officials. The Commune’s coverage of these allegations, accompanied by viral video clips, gave the story both national reach and documented evidence.
The report also broke the story of The Commune’s earlier RTI-driven expose on the illegal collaboration between Loyola College and Don Bosco International Media Academy (DBIMA) in Paris – a partnership that The Commune’s reporting helped bring to the attention of the UGC, which subsequently issued a nationwide public notice in July 2025 warning all institutions against unapproved foreign tie-ups.
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