‘Beef biryani should not be avoided in govt biryani festivals’

CHENNAI: Taking a strong note of beef biryani being avoided in the proposed Ambur biryani festival, the State Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on Monday said that beef biryani should not be avoided in biryani festivals.

"If beef biryani is avoided it will pave way for discrimination. In the coming years, the Tirupattur district administration should not pave way for discrimination. The order of the commission will be sent to the Chief Secretary, Home Secretary and to all the higher officials in districts,” said the Commission, in the order.

With the intention of obtaining a Geographical Indicator (GI) tag for Ambur biryani, the Tirupattur district administration announced a biryani festival from May 13 to 15 in which 20 varieties of biryani were planned to be sold in 30 stalls. However, it was announced that beef biryani will not be sold and the announcement triggered opposition from the local Dalit organisations who claimed that more than 2 lakh dalits reside in and around Ambur and beef is their main food.

The organisations also claimed that not serving beef amounts to discrimination and threatened that if beef biryani was not served, they will organise biryani right in front of the proposed biryani festival area. Following this, the district administration postponed the biryani festival citing continuous downpour.

The matter was taken to SC/ST commission and the commission sent a notice to Tirupattur district administration seeking clarification on the issue. In the reply, the district administration said that there was no discrimination shown in the biryani festival and the commission accepted the reply.

However, apart from the reply, the district collector Amar Kushawa had said that if a section demands beef biryani another section will demand pork biryani. The commission noticed that though the comments of the Collector are not present in the reply it did not create any impact and so the commission had not taken the comments into consideration.