People in Tamil Nadu are friendly: Governor RN Ravi on rumours of migrant labourers being attacked

Governor urged the North Indian labourers in Tamil Nadu not to panic and feel insecure, as the people of Tamil Nadu are very nice and friendly, and the state government is committed to provide them security.@PMOIndia @HMOIndia @PIB_India @pibchennai @ANI @PTI_News

— RAJ BHAVAN, TAMIL NADU (@rajbhavan_tn) March 5, 2023

Ravi’s vote of confidence for the DMK government in Tamil Nadu is quite a departure from his usual stand, as he often finds himself at loggerheads with it.

Over the past few months, he and the state government have found themselves on different sides of the fence on a number of issues.

This includes the Governor allegedly sitting on the bill banning online gambling.

In fact, in November last year, the DMK and its allies told President Droupadi Murmu that Ravi was a threat to the peace and tranquillity in Tamil Nadu!

‘All are safe in TN’

On Saturday, Chief Minister MK Stalin assured his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar that all migrant labourers in the state were safe and that the police had registered cases against two journalists of a Hindi daily spreading rumours.

Deposed AIADMK leader O Panneerselvam said the state government was duty-bound to ensure the safety of the migrant workers, and at the same time see to it that youth belonging to Tamil Nadu get employment in companies located in the state.

Fake, dated, unrelated, and misrepresented videos of assault with false claims — that migrants were being attacked and killed in Tamil Nadu — have for days now been perpetuated by some Hindi news outlets and several leaders of the BJP, especially from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

The screenshots of the videos they shared were not from Tamil Nadu, and neither did they involve migrant workers.

Related: How media, BJP leaders peddled misinformation, fake videos

Unrelated videos being shared

Misrepresented videos of many incidents that happened in Hyderabad, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and other parts of the country — some dating back years and having no connection with migrant workers from Bihar, have been used to attack Tamil Nadu.

Groups of Hindi-speaking migrants going back to their hometowns on vacation to celebrate Holi have been misrepresented as “fleeing Tamil Nadu out of fear”.

The Tamil Nadu Police on Friday, 3 March, debunked these reports, insisting that people from Bihar were safe and secure in Tamil Nadu.

As unrelated videos with false claims went viral, with mainstream media also peddling them without verification, the Opposition BJP created a ruckus in the Bihar Assembly on Friday.

The BJP demanded that a delegation of members of the House be sent to Tamil Nadu to verify reports of attacks on Bihar migrant workers in the state.

Nitish Kumar, however, decided to send a team of senior state government officials to Tamil Nadu to look into the allegations.

TN BJP, DMK dismiss allegatrions

Speaking to South First, DMK student wing head Rajeev Gandhi said that the reports of attacks against migrant workers from Bihar getting assaulted in Tamil Nadu were baseless.

“The videos that were circulated were showing some personal issues, and they cannot be taken into account for the whole state. We Tamil people never discriminate against anyone on the basis of their region or language,” Gandhi said.

Meanwhile, the BJP’s Tamil Nadu vice-president Narayanan Thirupathy also claimed that the news reports that portrayed Hindi-speaking people in Tamil Nadu were getting attacked are baseless.

However, he claimed that the issue snowballed because of the fringe elements in the DMK alliance.

“The reports that came out were all fake. Tamil people would never commit such crimes against other language-speaking people. The issue arose because some fringe elements in the DMK alliance claimed that north Indians were flooding Tamil Nadu. The government should have controlled them earlier,” Thirupathy told South First.

(With PTI inputs)