Continuing his whistle-stop campaigning for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for the second day on Sunday in Tamil Nadu’s western districts, party patriarch M. Karunanidhi launched a broadside against the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government’s anti-people policies in the State.
The AIADMK regime “does not understand the sufferings of the weavers in the western region and is not addressing the power crisis,” Mr. Karunanidhi said at an election rally in the hosiery town of Tirupur, while campaigning for DMK’s candidates for the Tirupur, Erode, Pollachi, Nilgiris and Coimbatore Lok Sabha constituencies.
Urging the voters to give a clear mandate to the DMK in the coming election, Mr. Karunanidhi said, “this government is not for the people. This is evident from the fact that it has not adhered to a timeframe to solve the power crisis despite frequently assuring the people of finding a solution.”
Asking the people who had gathered for the rally whether they needed a government that did not keep its promises, Mr. Karunanidhi drove home to the voters that his appeal on DMK’s behalf was not just for the Lok Sabha polls, but also for the next Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. Karunanidhi then left for Erode for electioneering later in the evening.
Security arrangements made by the police at the venue of the DMK’s rally in Tirupur went haywire on Sunday as people in large numbers broke the cordon and surged towards the dais with the police personnel unable to control them. Some of the enthusiasts even managed to climb over on to the dais and took pictures of Mr. Karunanidhi with their mobile phone cameras. Some members of the public also suffered minor injuries when the crowd surged forward towards the dais.
Chidambaram’s warning Campaigning for the Congress on Sunday in the Alangudi segment of the Sivaganga Parliamentary constituency, Finance Minister P Chidambaram warned that if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed government at the Centre, it would scrap the ‘Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme (MGNREGS)’.
Addressing meetings in different villages en route while canvassing support for his son Karti Chidambaram contesting the Sivaganga seat, the Finance Minister alleged that both the BJP and the AIADMK were the two enemies of the MGNREGS. Although the Centre had fixed Rs. 148 per day as the wage per labourer under the scheme, the AIADMK government had been depriving workers of the specified wages.
Citing an interview given by the BJP leader and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha recently in New Delhi, Mr. Chidambaram wondered how the former could term the pro-poor scheme of the UPA government as a ‘mistake’ and dub the allocation of Rs.30,000 crore for the scheme as “wasteful expenditure”.
