The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition that challenged a Government Order detailing guidelines to remove caste-based names from public places.
A Division Bench of Justices C.V. Karthikeyan and R. Sakthivel dismissed the petition filed in October 2025 by S. Paramasivam of Madurai. The court directed the State to continue the exercise for removing caste-based names in public places.
Earlier, the court had partially restrained the State from implementing the G.O.. However, it had permitted the State to conduct an assessment to determine such places.
The petitioner, the State vice-president of Hindu Advocates Front, said the G.O. issued guidelines for identifying and renaming roads, streets, residential areas, bus stands, markets, waterbodies, and village panchayats that had caste-based names. There had been no complaint about caste abuse by quoting the name of a street, road or waterbody all these years.
He said though Annexure-IA had been captioned ‘Sample list of names’, the list diligently excluded great patriots from Tamil Nadu who had sacrificed their lives and wealth during the freedom struggle.
The names of spiritual leaders who instilled moral and spiritual qualities in society had been suppressed. The names of Nayanmargal, Alwargal, Samayakuravargal, and Siddhargal were conspicuously absent from the list, he said, adding that the G.O. declined to provide an opportunity for submitting objections or giving a hearing to the people of the localities that were to be given new names.
Published – September 23, 2026 08:30 pm IST
