CHENNAI: This Saturday, ‘The Times of India’ reporter Srikkanth Dhasarathy, who had gone to cover a function at Anna University where chief minister M K Stalin was the chief guest, was stopped from entering the venue.
The reason: He was wearing a black shirt. He had earlier presented his credentials as a journalist with the local police and the organisers, but was stopped by a man in a safari suit. “Don’t you know the rule?” he said. “Black dress isn’t allowed at CM’s function”. The reporter returned without covering the function.
We made inquiries and found no such rule or protocol. Was it a ridiculous act of an overzealous security officer or was there such an instruction from the chief minister’s office to his security? Either way it was an affront to a citizen’s personal liberty and arguably an offence (stopping a professional from discharging his duty). So, why is the CM’s security seeing red in black? Of all the colours, black — a colour that Periyar popularised as a mark of protest against social oppression, which later graduated to a symbol of pride for the Dravidian stock?
