Surendran snubs MIC delegation

The PKR vice president was absent from his office when a MIC Youth team went there to collect information about stateless Indians.

PETALING JAYA: A delegation from MIC Youth turned up at PKR headquarters today to collect information about stateless Indians from PKR vice president N Surendran, but left empty handed.

Surendran was not in his office and did not turn up during the half hour that the delegation of five waited for him.

The delegation’s leader, MIC Youth councillor M Saravanan, questioned Surendran’s sincerity in his claim of concern for the plight of stateless Indians.

Last Thursday, Surendran, leading a demonstration at the Parliament gates, said the number of stateless Indians in Malaysia was 300,000, a claim that MIC has scoffed at.

MIC secretary-general S Murugessan, while disputing the figure, offered to work with PKR for the benefit of Malaysian Indians who have been denied their citizenship rights. Saravanan’s delegation went to the PKR office today under his orders.

Saravanan told reporters that only Puchong PKR chairman S Murali was there to greet his team.

“We were informed that the details about stateless Indians are not in the PKR office,” he said.

Saravanan reiterated the MIC position that 300,000 was a grossly exaggerated figure, and he described as “weird” Surendran’s recent statement that he would submit the details to the federal government instead of to MIC.

“It seems like Surendran is living in a jungle and is not aware that MIC is part of the governing coalition,” he said.

“We think he is stressed out after making a false statement to gain Indian support and seeing it backfire.”

He said MIC was ever ready to help anyone facing “MyKad and birth certificate problems”.

According to the National Registration Department, there are 40,000 undocumented Indians in Malaysia.

However, MIC says it has identified only about 15,000 Indians without citizenship documentation since it launched its MyDaftar campaign on Feb 23 last year. Out of that number, 9,529 submitted the relevant application forms and nearly 6,000 have received their documents, party leaders have said.