Madurai: Madras high court on Wednesday dismissed a plea challenging the GO dated Oct 6, 2025, which issued guidelines to remove and rename streets, areas and waterbodies with caste names.




A division bench of Justice C V Karthikeyan and Justice R Sakthivel , which was hearing a public interest litigation filed in 2025 by S Paramasivam , state vice-president of Hindu Advocates Front , observed that it did not find any objection to the GO. The judges also called upon the govt to include and rename left-out areas.




Earlier, the court passed an interim order directing the state not to take a final decision on the implementation of a GO which issued guidelines to remove and rename streets, areas and waterbodies with caste names. However, the court permitted the state to proceed with the work to identify such places.




The petitioner stated that the GO was unnecessary as there was no complaint about caste abuse by mentioning the names of the streets, roads or waterbodies all these years.




He stated that all of a sudden, before the assembly election, the govt directed its machinery to identify names with castes and rename them. The intention of the govt is not to give equal treatment or to eradicate communal hatred, but to alter the names of the streets, roads, residential areas and waterbodies with the names of leaders and favourites of the then ruling party ( DMK ).




He stated that the list of sample names diligently excludes great patriots from Tamil Nadu who sacrificed their lives and wealth in our nation’s freedom struggle. The names of Nayanmargal, Alwargal, Samayakuravargal and Siddharkal are conspicuously absent from the list. The GO also declined to afford an opportunity for submitting the objection and a hearing to the people of the locality which was going to be given a new name. Hence, the petitioner moved court.