Tiruchirapalli: Charging Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi with betraying the interests of farmers and fishermen, AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa on Saturday asked people to overthrow the `anti-people` government in next year`s assembly elections.
Virtually launching her poll campaign in the Cauvery
Delta districts at a massive public meeting here, she said
Karunanidhi had failed to pressurise the Centre to gazette
the Cauvery Tribunal`s final award for its implementation.
"Right from 1970, Karunanidhi had betrayed the
interests of Delta farmers by his failures on the Cauvery
issue. This has led to reduction in the area of cultivation,
leading to decrease in the agricultural production," she said.
The ceding of Katchatheevu islet in the Palk Strait to
Sri Lanka in 1974 had led to the recurring killing of fishermen by Sri Lankan Navy, she claimed.
She also accused Karunanidhi of not demanding rollback
of increase in prices of petroleum products as it might prompt
Congress to withdraw support to his "minority government"
leading to its collapse.
Justifying her repeatedly calling the DMK government a
minority one, she said DMK did not have majority in the 234-
member Assembly and survived on Congress support.
Seeking to create a wedge between DMK and Congress,
Jayalalithaa said Karunanidhi, whose party was a constituent
of the ruling UPA at the Centre, did not have `broadmind` to
include the Congress in his ministry.
Describing Karunanidhi as "anti-Dalit", Jayalalithaa
claimed that Union Minister and his elder son M K Alagiri was
not named his political heir only because he married a Dalit.
A Dalit IAS officer Uma Shankar was recently suspended
from service on "flimsy grounds", she alleged.
Law and order in the state has deteriorated and those
who raised their voice against the DMK government were being
subjected to oppression and repression, she charged.
She ridiculed the DMK`s youth wing organising an
agitation against her for seeking repeated adjournments in the
disproportionate assets case, pending in a Bangalore court.
It was unheard of for a ruling party to organise
agitation against an Opposition leader, she said calling it a
`conspiracy` to get her convicted and disqualified from
contesting the assembly polls.
The meeting was held at Railway grounds at Golden
Rock.
Reports suggested that Jayalalithaa had sent a special
emissary to meet Railway Minister Mamata Bannerjee to get
special permission for holding the meeting, creating ripples
in the DMK.
PTI
