People's Democracy

Third Edition Of Theekkathir Launched

S P Rajendran

Theekkathir, Tamil daily, launched its third edition in a multi-colour form from Coimbatore – the city of the working class – at a function on May 23, 2007 held at V K K Menon Road.

Theekkathir published from Madurai and Chennai on behalf of CPI(M) Tamilnadu state committee has a long history of organising working people. Since past four decades it is serving as the voice of working class.

In 1963, Theekkathir was started as a weekly organ from Chennai with the fund collected by Coimbatore mill workers. Its first editor was Comrade Arputhasamy, fondly called as Appu.

When CPI(M) was formed in 1964, Theekkathir became the official organ of the Party’s Tamilnadu state committee and its regular edition was launched in 1969 at Madurai, the stronghold of the Party. Theekkathir became a daily newspaper in 1971.

The paper’s second edition started from Chennai in 1993.

The inauguration of the Coimbatore edition took place on the memorial day of veteran leader of CPI(M) Comrade M R Venkat Raman, on May 23. Party state secretary N Varadharajan presided over the function. Prakash Karat, general secretary of CPI(M) released the first copy of Theekkathir, Coimbatore edition and addressed the gathering of around ten thousand people. K Thangavel, state secretariat member received the first copy. R Nallakannu, national executive committee member of CPI offered fraternal greetings at the meeting.

A book on “Minorities in Modern India” written by K N Panikkar was also released in the meeting by K BalaBarathi MLA and was received by S A Perumal, general manager of Theekkathir.

N Srinivasan, chief general manager of the daily, delivered the welcome address and P R Natarajan, CPI(M) Coimbatore west district secretary proposed a vote of thanks.

A K Padmanaban, central committee member, D Lakshmanan, P Sampath, all state secretariat members, V Parameshwaran, editor of Theekkathir, A Abdul Wahab and L G Geethanandan, veteran leaders, G Govindasamy, CPI(M) legislative Party leader, and district secretaries of the Party K Kamaraj (Coimbatore East), P Marimuthu (Erode), K Karunakaran (Namakkal), M Rajagopalan (Salem) and Thiagarajan (The Nilgiris) were also present in the meeting.

Earlier, the office of the Theekkathir Coimbatore edition was opened by N Varadharajan.

On the occasion of launching of Theekkathir’s third edition, the chief minister of Tamilnadu M Karunanidhi, a regular reader of the paper, and the chief ministers of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, V S Achuthanandan, Buddadeb Battacharjee and Manik Sarkar sent messages of greeting. The messages received from the editors of fraternal papers included Sitaram Yechury (People’s Democracy), V V Dakshinamurthy (Deshabimani), Narayan Dutta (Ganasakthi) and V Krishnaiah, chairman of Prajasakthi Sahitee Trust and greetings were also received from R Umanath, K Varadharajan, Polit Bureau members.

On this occasion, Theekkathir released a special number.