DMK chief M Karunanidhi today hit out at archrival and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for blaming his party’s rule for the bad health of the state PSUs, indicating the new government has “nothing” to claim for itself on the projects front, including power generation.
Recalling the budget speech made by Finance Minister O Pannseerselvam in August after the AIADMK stormed to power, Karunanidhi said the former had mentioned Tamil Nadu was in the forefront in E-Governance, SMEs and manufacturing sector besides betting on power generation projects.
“It was mentioned that new power generation projects would yield 3,280 mw of power in 2011-12. This refers to the projects taken up during the DMK regime and not in the (then) three-month old AIADMK rule,” he said in a statement here.
The AIADMK government had, on Nov 17, announced a steep hike on the prices of milk and bus fares. Jayalalithaa had also indicated the power tariff would also go up in the wake of mounting losses suffered by the state-run power supplier.
Jayalalithaa had yesterday defended the price hikes, saying the “the painful decision” had been taken to save the PSUs—Aavin and state transport corporations, which were left in “bad health” by the previous DMK government.
She also dismissed as a “bag of lies” Karunanidhi’s earlier statement that despite officials’ request, he had not allowed rise in prices of milk and bus fares. “He is only pretending to speak for the people. They are aware of his crocodile tears,” she added.
Karunanidhi wondered if it was “just” on the part of Jayalalithaa to issue statements blaming the DMK government.
“They had also promised to slowly do away with power cuts after improving the situation. But the situation today is that power cut has been increased from two to five hours (in rural areas),” he said.
“No new power generation projects have been started. And she blames me for shedding crocodile tears. But people won’t be fooled by all this,” Karunanidhi said.
