DMK’s working president M.K. Stalin would commence a long ‘Cauvery walkathon’ on Saturday morning from Trichy to Chennai to meet Governor Banwarilal Purohit and submit a petition on the setting up of Cauvery Management Board (CMB), urging him to take it up vigorously with the BJP-led Centre.

Stalin and other party functionaries and leaders, accompanied by huge number of cadres, would embark on the ‘walkathon’ (meant to retrieve Tamils’ rights over use of Cauvery water) from Mukkombu in Trichy on Saturday (07th April).  Protests across the State by political parties and people have gained momentum after the last date of 29th March, fixed by the Supreme Court to the Centre to set up a CMB, expired.

The DMK held a consultation meeting at its Chennai headquarters last Sunday with its allies to chalk out a strategy for taking the protest forward.  The meeting decided to observe total shutdown today (05th April) which had already commenced at 06:00 a.m.  This is now being followed up with the ‘long walkathon’ to commence from Trichy on Saturday morning to reach Chennai as part of ‘Cauvery rights retrieval’ protest.

The walkathon is likely to take as many as seven days for the walkers to reach Chennai, which is 350 km away from Trichy.  Congress and Naam Tamizhar Katchi volunteers would be joining the walkathon with Stalin and others.