Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam president and former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has termed the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government a Tuglaq durbar for its decision to convert the new Secretariat complex into hospital.
Addressing a public meeting organised here on Friday to commemorate the decision of the Supreme Court directing the Tamil Nadu government to implement the Samacheer Kalvi this year itself, he said: “I have no objection to this being used as a hospital. I have willed my Gopalapuram residence to be a hospital after my demise.”
Had the government intended it to be so, “I myself would have guided it. But, what makes me miserable is that after spending Rs.500 crore on an Assembly complex with substantial space for the functioning of Ministers, their offices, etc., that too done with enormous and meticulous care, it is to be used for something else. I offered the legislators and the ministers considerable space. But, if they were to say that we will stick only to our sparrow's nest, it is for them (AIADMK) and those trusting them. I do not want to interfere in this”, he said.
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Mr. Karunanidhi, who dwelt at length on how Samacheer Kalvi was introduced, pointed out that there was an attempt to deny equity even when C. Rajgopalachari headed the State government and tried to introduce “kulakalvi thittam” (learning the avocation being practised in the family). “It was because of the struggle launched by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam founder C.N. Annadurai that it was dropped.”
According to him, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa did not believe in anything called “equality”. Hence her antipathy towards Samacheer Kalvi whose main motto is equality and quality for all. The same Education Secretary, who had submitted to the court that the Samacheer Kalvi was one of “quality”, gave a conflicting opinion to the same court when the new government took over. “This was pointed out by the Supreme Court itself and it called this surprising”.
The way in which the AIADMK government had handled the Samacheer Kalvi issue “makes me feel that it has caused immeasurable harm to posterity”, he lamented.
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