AIADMK coordinator O. Panneerselvam and co-coordinator Edappadi K Palaniswami garlanded the statue of the party founder and former Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran at the party’s headquarters here, and released a book authored by the party’s deputy propaganda secretary S. Kalaipunithan on the founder.
The AIADMK’s former interim general secretary, V.K. Sasikala, visited the memorial house of MGR on Arcot Street in T. Nagar and offered floral homage to the bust of the former Chief Minister.
The AMMK general secretary. T.T.V. Dhinakaran, who also paid his respects to the AIADMK’s founder, expressed shock over the reports of the Central government rejecting the proposal of Tamil Nadu for a tableau displaying freedom fighters for the Republic Day parade. He wanted the Centre to permit the tableau.
Cotton, yarn price
Mr. Panneerselvam on Monday sought the intervention of Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on the issue of rising prices of cotton and yarn.
Referring to the call given by garment exporting units for a two-day strike, he pointed out that the average price of cotton per candy was ₹38,000 in 2020, and went up to ₹55,000 at the end of that year. It rose to ₹64,000 at the end of 2021. Now it stood at ₹73,000. If this trend continued, the price could touch even ₹80,000. The reason attributed to the increase was the levy of import duty. Prior to this, the price in India was lower than that of the international market.
Likewise, the yarn price has increased by ₹30 per kg since the beginning of this year and in the past year, it rose by ₹150 per kg. In view of the shortage of yarn, the availability of cotton in the market, which should have been 200 lakh bales in the last three months, was only around 125 lakh bales, leading to the import of cotton.
Even though import and export, as a subject, belonged to the Central government, it was the duty of the State government to explain to the Centre the problems being faced by the textile sector in the State. The Chief Minister should exert enough pressure for the removal of the duty.
In another statement, Mr. Palaniswami, slammed the State for filing cases against those who criticised it. There were honest police officers whose services could be used for establishing the rule of law. Action should be taken against erring police officers, he added.
