Chennai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi was conspiring to do away with the States by cutting out the revenue flow and appropriating those funds for the Union Government though he had claimed that he knew the problems of the States on assuming the top post in the country after serving as Chief Minister of Gujarat for 12 years, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Tuesday.
Addressing an election meeting at Manimangalam in Kanchipuram district to canvass votes for DMK candidates T R Baalu, contesting from Sriperumbudur constituency, and Selvam, from Kanchipuram constituency, Stalin said that Modi’s conspiracy against the States was revealed by none other than the CEO of Niti Aayog, B V R Subrahmanyam, recently.
Though Modi had claimed that he would be friendly to the States he gave trouble to all the States under non-BJP rule by appointing troublesome Governors who meddled in the affairs of the State governments and he made the States fight for their rights and funds by climbing the steps of courts, he said.
While he once said that those in New Delhi should not govern the States, today the Union Government had usurped all the powers of the States, including taxation by reducing the State governments to the level of Municipal Corporations, he said.
He ensured that the Delhi State government was deprived of its power to even transfer its officers by bringing in the Delhi Service Bill after the Supreme Court ordered that officers should be under the control of the State government, Stalin said, listing out the frightening things that would happen if Modi was voted back to power in the coming elections.
The country would be taken backward by 200 years in civilization, history would be twisted and rewritten, science would be pushed back with retrograde stories gaining currency and acceptance, people’s thinking would be blunted, all rights taken away, social justice buried in a grave and the Constitution would be replace with rules framed by the RSS, he warned.
Pointing out the typical doublespeak of Modi, Stalin said that while speaking about women’s empowerment in public the BJP government never addressed any real problems faced by women in the country and listed out a series of incidents. First women’s reservation was not fully implemented, then when women in Manipur were sexually assaulted, Modi turned a blind eye to it, he said.
In Gujarat, when Bilkis Banu, after a prolonged struggle got justice by ensuring that his rapists were sent to jail, the government released them, making a mockery of justice and in Kashmir when a child, Asifa, was kept in a temple of sexually assaulted, the BJP took out procession against the police action on the case, he recalled.
Modi was seeking votes by employing cheap divisive politics with a view to creating chasms among people on the caste, religious and culinary lines, which was in sharp contrast to the DMK campaigning in the election by listing out its various achievements.
One of the major achievements of the DMK government was to make the State Number One in the country in a wide range of sectors like textile exports, readymade export, leather goods export, electronic export and export preparedness index, he said, adding that the state had also been topping on providing health care facilities for pregnant women and post-natal care.
Stalin also told the voters not to vote for the AIADMK as its general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami had not yet fully renounced the BJP. Even to an interviewer who asked if his party would extend support to the BJP if it needed its backing, he did not give a definite no, he said.
