Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Saturday said that Governor Banwarilal Purohit was not interfering in the functioning of the government by conducting review meetings. He also said the Income Tax searches on Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence were confined only to a few rooms.
Talking to reporters at the Madurai airport, the Chief Minister spoke for the first time on the Governor conducting review meeting with officials in Coimbatore early this week.
“The Governor was only learning the functioning of the departments. It is wrong to say that he was interfering. Some opposition parties are bent upon creating fissures in the government. It will not work,” he said in reply to a question.
On the I-T raids at the Poes Garden residence of late Jayalalithaa, he said: “Amma’s residence has always been a place of worship and would continue to be so in future as well.” The search conducted there on Friday night, he said, was confined only to some rooms and definitely not in the places where Amma lived.
Referring to V.K. Sasikala as Chinnamma , Mr. Palaniswami said people like T.T.V. Dhinakaran should take the blame (for the I-T raids) as they had misused Amma ’s residence and spoilt her name.
When asked if Sasikala and Mr. Dhinakaran were instrumental in making him the Chief Minister, Mr. Palaniswami replied that it was wrong to say so. “The MLAs elected me,” he claimed.
The Chief Minister also clarified that neither he nor his government had anything to do with the I-T searches.
