Villupuram: In a stinging attack on DMK’s ‘contradictory’ assertions on prohibition and corruption ahead of the May 16 Assembly polls, AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalithaa on Friday asserted that the former’s bid “to garner votes by confusing the people on these two issues will not succeed”.
Addressing a massive election rally on the town’s outskirts, to introduce the AIADMK candidates from 13 Assembly constituencies in Villupuram and Tiruvannamalai district, including former minister C. Ve. Shanmugam who is contesting the Villupuram seat, she said the vagueness with which DMK was touting its ‘total prohibition’ plank exposed its lack of singularity of purpose in dealing with a people’s issue.
Picking holes in the recent assertions by DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi at poll rallies, Jayalalithaa said the former had assured that the file to bring back prohibition in Tamil Nadu “will be the first file he will sign” if the DMK was voted to power. “If that is so, then why should the DMK manifesto say they will bring in a new law to reintroduce prohibition?”
Asking what this ‘confusion’ on prohibition was all about, Jayalalithaa wondered whether the plan in closing down all State-owned Tasmac retail wine shops was to bring back selling of lndian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) through private bars. Again, Karunanidhi at another place had said prohibition they had in mind was what had been re-introduced in 1974.
“But in 1974, there was no total prohibition in Tamil Nadu, and does he mean the same thing now?” Jayalalithaa thundered to rapturous approval from the huge crowd.
The AIADMK’s stand of bringing back prohibition “in phases to move towards total prohibition” was well thought out in the larger public interest. Jayalalithaa also tore into DMK’s probity plank. Reminding the people that the DMK-Congress alliance was mired in a slew of scams including 2G spectrum allocation scam, Jayalalithaa pointed to discrepancies in Karunanidhi’s avowals on DMK’s first family disinvesting from ‘Sun TV’ shares in 2006.
The cash realisation figures furnished by DMK chief and by Kalanidhi Maran himself, who heads the ‘Sun Network’, varied and looked the transaction was not above board, she charged.
