Chennai, Aug 10: PMK today charged Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker K Kalimuthu with adopting double standards over treating issues put forth by TMC and PMK MLAs. PMK founder Dr S Ramdoss, in a statement, said Kalimuthu, while revealing to reporters, the contents of letters written by five TMC MLAs, asking him to treat them as TMC members, even after the party's merger with congress, had quoted a precedent in 1989, when the lone AIADMK MLA of the Janaki Ramachandran faction, P H Pandiyan, was allowed to continue as a member of the group after both factions merged that year.
However, he had not followed another precedent of 'disqualifying' members for violating the whip. In 1988, the then Speaker, P H Pandiyan, had disqualified some AIADMK MLAs, including V R Nedunchezhiyan, for not obeying the whip to vote for the confidence motion, sought by the then Chief Minister, Janaki Ramachandran, even before the house took up the motion for voting and the demand for action was made.
The Speaker's 'double standards' had now been exposed, he added.

Bureau Report