Chennai, Mar 15 (IANS): Miffed over the granting of reservation to the Vanniyars, the Chettiar communities of Tamil Nadu have threatened to boycott the upcoming Assembly elections and also announced to file a case in the Madras high court against it.

Recently, the Vanniyar community was granted 10.5 per cent reservation under Most Backward Classes (MBC) leaving another 40 similar communities without any reservation.

A joint association of Chettiar communities, Federation of Kongu Chettiars and Sozhliya Chettiar association has announced the boycotting of the upcoming Assembly elections.

The joint association claims that it represents the Kongu, Shozliya, Nilgiri and Kuruguni Chettiars and said that they have already given representations to Chief Minister Edappady K. Palaniswami as well as DMK chief M.K. Stalin against the "injustice" meted out to them.

Babu Padmanabhan, the coordinator of the association told IANS over telephone from Coimbatore: "Yes we have held a meeting of our four communities and we have called for the intervention of both Chief Minister K. Palaniswami and the DMK President M.K. Stalin to remove this 10.5 per cent reservation under the MBC category to the Vanniyar community which is totally unacceptable."

The senior leader of the association added, "While there are 40 other communities under this category, the state government has given reservation status only to the Vanniyar community as they are an organised vote bank and this is not acceptable. We are moving high court and will also boycott elections if an amicable settlement is not reached."

The Chettiar community has a significant presence in areas like Coimbatore, Erode, Salem areas and this can turn out to be an issue to be sensitively handled by the AIADMK government.