Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday, July 7, announced that 2,739 student hostels run by the government will be uniformly renamed as 'Samooga Needhi (Social Justice)' hostels by removing the caste and religious identifiers that are presently part of their names, depending on which departments they come under.

The 2,739 hostels included 727 hostels by the Backwards Classes Welfare department, 455 for the Most Backwards Classes Welfare department, 157 for the Denotified Communities, 20 hostels by the Minorities Welfare department, 1,332 hostels by the Adi Dravidar Welfare department and 48 by the Tribal Welfare department, stated a report by The New Indian Express.

A total of 1,79,568 students study in these hostels, the statement said. Almost all these hostels carry the name of their department, which acts as an identifier for different caste categories.

Stalin, in a statement, said that the government's decision followed careful consideration of Justice K Chandru's committee's key recommendation that all caste identifiers in all government and private schools be removed and urged the removal of caste identifiers in schools that are named after individuals.

The committee was formed to recommend measures to eradicate caste-based differences in educational institutions.

The statement said that in some of the government-run student hostels that are named after eminent leaders, the word 'Social Justice' will be appended to their names. Stalin assured that the change of names would not have any impact on the existing infrastructural and monetary support.

Reiterating his "Dravidian Model" government's commitment to social justice and ensuring 'everything for everyone', Stalin recalled his announcement in the Assembly that the term 'colony' associated with habitations, which has socially become an identifier to predominantly denote the place where Scheduled Caste (SC) people lived, would be removed from government records and efforts would be taken to eliminate it from common usage as well, according to the report by The New Indian Express.