The Pattali Makkal Katchi is working out an alliance for a political change in 2016, and “liquor and corruption” will be the bedrock of its campaign, party founder S. Ramadoss said here on Sunday.
Without hinting at any possible alliance, he said industrial growth would be at the centre of the manifesto.
Speaking to The Hindu , on the sidelines of a party meeting here, Dr. Ramadoss said the Supreme Court censured the State government and the Chennai Corporation for grant of contracts through private negotiations and not through tenders for the construction of bus shelters in 2003. The judgment was a pointer to the extent of corruption under the AIADMK.
He said a caste census would help those on the lowest rung of each community and it would not lead to majoritarian politics, as feared by some. “It is the same as an enumeration of the SC/ST population. Periyar attended caste conferences and never wrote against any caste census. B.R. Ambedkar was not opposed to the rights of the OBCs. Caste census was carried out until 1931,” he pointed out.
During the President’s Rule in 1988, a G.O. was passed for undertaking a caste census on the recommendations of the Venkatakrishnan Commission that looked into the issue. “However, DMK president M. Karunanidhi shelved it after he became Chief Minister in 1989. It is interesting to see Mr. Karunanidhi pitching in for such a census now,” Dr. Ramadoss said.
The PMK is opposed to the Centre’s plan to limit the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to 250 districts from 600 backward districts. “This would affect 47 lakh jobs in rural areas of Tamil Nadu,” he said.
