Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Tuesday reiterated that she was yet to receive Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent letter on the Kudankulam nuclear power plant issue.
Pointing out that she was now serving her third term as Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalithaa said in a statement that she had exchanged correspondence with several Prime Ministers. “Till now, no Prime Minister had conducted himself this way: a letter was purportedly written to me but released to the media first even after which, the letter has not yet been sent to me. Such ‘new experience' has taken place twice in the last 10 days.”
Reacting strongly to reported remark of Union Minister of State V. Narayanswamy that the Centre was still awaiting the State government's response on the composition of the proposed committee, she said that he had deliberately blamed the State government. Recalling events in the last one month regarding the Kudankulam agitation, the Chief Minister referred to the assurance given by Dr Singh when a delegation led by Finance Minister O. Paneerselvam called on him on October 7. Dr. Singh told the delegation that a committee, comprising representatives of the Central and State governments and agitators, would be constituted to examine the Kudankulam issue in depth. So far, the Union government had not taken a single step.
She explained that the contents of a letter written by the Prime Minister on October 4 were released to the press on October 7, but she did not get it. On October 9, the State government got a copy of the letter through facsimile. It was on October 10 that the Chief Minister's office received the letter. On October 12, the media carried reports that the Prime Minister had written one more letter to her. She was yet to receive it.
She gave the explanation in the backdrop of the Union Minister's reported remark and said suspicion arose whether the Centre was working in such a way to put the blame on the State government.
Reiterating her government's position that work on the Kudankulam project should be kept in abeyance till the local people's problems were sorted out, the Chief Minister said that as the Centre had not suspended work at the power plant, the people were forced to resort to fast and demonstration.
The Centre should immediately take steps to resolve the Kudankulam issue and stop levelling baseless charges against the State government.
