All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) general secretary and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Tuesday challenged Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president M. Karunanidhi to declare that his party would never have an alliance with the Congress as the Central government led by it abstained from voting against Sri Lanka on the resolution moved by the U.S. in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on alleged war crimes.
“If the DMK had indeed pulled out of the United Progressive Alliance government on the grounds that the Centre did not intervene to check the atrocities on Sri Lankan Tamils, should he not declare that his party would never support the Congress,” she asked during a campaign in Coimbatore for her party’s candidate for Coimbatore constituency A.P. Nagarajan.
Accusing the DMK president of vacillating over the issue of alliance, she pointed out that the DMK withdrew support to the Congress-led government on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue. And, when faced with elections, Mr. Karunanidhi offered conditional support to the Congress if it regretted its stand on various issues including Sri Lanka.
Now that the Congress-led Central government had made its stand very clear by abstaining from voting at the UNHRC, what stopped him from denouncing the Congress forever, she wondered.
Ms. Jayalalithaa asserted that in reality, the DMK quit the UPA only because its members were jailed in the 2G spectrum scam.
Mr. Karunanidhi even offered to support the Congress if it were to be secular. Did he mean that the Congress was not secular for the last 10 years? If so, how did the DMK remain its ally for two terms at the Centre, she asked.
Campaigning for party nominee C. Mahendran in Pollachi, Ms. Jayalalithaa said industries in Tamil Nadu had grown under the AIADMK regime and not one industry had moved to Karnataka in search of a good investment climate despite Chief Minister Siddharamaiah’s invitation to invest in his State.
Rejecting DMK Treasurer M.K. Stalin’s statement that industries were migrating, she said that in the past 34 months, 33 companies had signed MoUs with the Tamil Nadu government to invest Rs. 31,000 crore.