Chennai:
In a major setback to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, the Madras High Court today asked the state government to reinstate 13,000 public welfare workers. These workers had been sacked by the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK regime last year after she rode back to power.
The workers, working on a contract basis, were originally appointed in 1989 by the then DMK government. The AIADMK government subsequently sacked them in 1991 and then in 2001 again - both the times it came back to power - alleging that most of the workers were DMK cadres.
The DMK, however, kept re-instating them, denying Ms Jayalalithaa's allegation.