Where’s the Sheila Dixit charge sheet, asks Cho S Ramaswamy

Chennai: Veteran journalist and Thuglak editor Cho S Ramaswamy recalled that Kejriwal had claimed to possess a 360-page charge sheet ready against Sheila Dixit’s corruption and promised action within one week of his assuming office.

“But when BJP’s Harsh Vardhan asked where was the action, Kejriwal asked Harsh Vardhan to provide proof. Does he want page no 361 from the BJP?” Cho asked amidst laughter from the huge audience gathered to hear him on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of Thuglak magazine on Tuesday.

“This clearly proves that the AAP will not do anything to irritate the Congress since it has tasted power and wants to retain it at all costs. There is no intellectual honesty about Kejriwal or his party,” Cho argued. He called the AAP as another avataar of the Congress aimed at splitting the anti-Congress votes in the Lok Sabha elections. He also pointed out how the free water supply and cuts in power tariff announced by the AAP government were already failing.

Saying that there’s nothing new in the AAP government’s so-called austerity measures, Cho said, “Ramakrishna Hegde as Karnataka CM used to travel without police escort in an unmarked car that stopped at all traffic signals. He too held janata durbars but without any of this tamasha. If you want an example for simplicity, there is Manik Sarkar, the CPM chief minister of Tripura who even today uses public transport. So what Kejriwal is claiming to do is nothing novel. He is doing it before TV cameras and once the channels get bored, his stunts will fade away”.

Earlier, BJP leader L. Ganesan said his party would approach the elections only with the track record of development of Narendra Modi’s government in Gujarat.

“The broom will not sweep on its own, a hand has to wield it”, he said, implying that the Congress was manipulating Kejriwal’s party to scuttle the BJP.

CPM’s Rajya Sabha member T.K. Rangarajan was confident that a non-Congress, non-BJP front would be able to provide a pro-people government since both the Congress and BJP “are dancing to the tunes of the corporate sector”.

Congress leader Peter Alphonse said that AAP’s emergence proved that people wanted to be involved not just in the administration of the government but also in day-to-day decision-making.

The Music Academy auditorium was overflowing, with people even filling up the adjacent mini-hall and the car park to watch the proceedings on TV screens.

‘BJP should back Jaya if Modi can’t make it’

Chennai: The BJP should back Jayalalithaa for the Prime Minister's post if for any reason it is unable to form the government by itself, Cho has said.

“The country needs a strong leader like Narendra Modi as PM. I am confident he would bring about a big change. If for any reason the BJP is unable to form a government, it should support Jayalalithaa for the Prime Minister’s post”, Cho said, praising the AIADMK government for making headway in tackling the power crisis, making the state EB credit worthy and the transport corporations profitable once again by taking tough measures.

Cho said the AAP was pretending to be a practitioner of value-based politics and would be found out very soon as it had already become power hungry.

Already, Arvind Kejriwal had gone back on many of the assertions he had made. “He said he would not enter politics, but he did. He said he would not contest elections, but he did.

He said he would sit only in the opposition but showed great hurry in becoming chief minister.

He said he would not take the support of either the Congress or the BJP, but has taken the support of the Congress to form the government”.