AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Thursday said that the DMK and its president, and Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin were “two-faced”. “They say they oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but welcome him to Tamil Nadu. They even used white umbrellas to welcome him,” he said at meeting, held in Madurai as part of his campaign for the Lok Sabha election.
Canvassing votes for the party’s candidate for the Madurai Lok Sabha constituency, P. Sarvanan, he pointed out that former Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who opposed Mr. Modi, did not receive the Prime Minister when he had come to attend programmes in the State.
However, the situation was different in Tamil Nadu, he said, adding that the DMK was earlier in an alliance with the BJP (in 1999) and shared power at the Centre during the Congress government.
“We have moved away from the BJP,” he said. According to him, the DMK did not want to work for the people and was only hungry for power. The DMK family wants to be in power. They have no intention to work for the welfare of people, he said, and questioned whether the party had any ideology.
Taking a dig at DMK leader and Sports Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, Mr. Palaniswami said that the former keeps talking about the unfinished AIIMS project in Madurai.
“The AIADMK was instrumental in getting the project to Tamil Nadu. What have you done for the project. Instead of showing the [AIIMS] brick in public, you could have done that in Parliament to exert pressure on the Centre. Your alliance had 38 MPs,” he said.
He said that Mr. Stalin had not fulfilled even 10% of the poll promises. “They keep talking about the abolition of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET). But it was the Congress and the DMK that introduced the test. Now they are making false promises,” he added.
During the DMK rule, all departments were riddled with corruption, law and order had failed, drug abuse was on the rise, and the State’s debt burden had burgeoned, Mr. Palaniswami said, adding: “For every scheme you announce, you set up a panel. As many as 52 panels have been set up so far. There are IAS officers for departments. So what is the need for panels?,” Mr. Palaniswami asked.
On the contrary, the State had witnessed development under the erstwhile AIADMK regime, Mr. Palaniswami said, adding that the AIADMK alliance would sweep the Lok Sabha election in the State.
