TIRUCHY: A section of farmers from Tiruchy on Monday staged a protest by crawling before the district collector for various demands, including to allow the tenant farmers from Pappakurichi to continue farming activities.

The members of Desiya Thennidhiya Nadhigal Inaippu Sangam, led by the state president P Ayyakannu, who came to the Collectorate with a petition in which they stated that the tenant farmers from Pappakurichi in Tiruchy, who were cultivating for the past several years, have been denied permission in recent days, citing that the particular land was leased by a private trust.

The trustees have not only damaged their cultivation but also fenced the land to prevent their entry, the petition stated. After submitting the petition to Collector V Saravanan, the farmers waited for a response from him, but he forwarded the petition to the concerned department for action.

However, the farmers who were present started to fall on the floor and crawled, demanding an immediate reply, while the Collector continued to receive the petitions from the others. The protesting farmers also raised slogans in support of their demand, and this disrupted the ongoing grievances redressal meet, and later, the police removed them from the spot.