Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin would boycott the NITI Aayog meeting in Delhi on August 27 and every subsequent meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to protest against the total neglect of the State in the Union Budget, which, he said, had been partial to States like Bihar and Andhra Pradesh for obvious political reasons and deprived Tamil Nadu of its required funds and new road or rail projects.
Speaking to the media at Anna Arivalayam, the DMK headquarters, on Tuesday after the budget was presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharam in Parliament, Stalin said he was highly disappointed as the budget did not aspire to help the people of the State in any way and alleged that the people were being victimized for resisting communal forces in the Lok Sabha elections.
Referring Modi’s statement the other day that politics could be kept out of governance, Stalin said that that spirit did not reflect in budget that only favoured the States whose ruling parties facilitated the minority BJP Government turn into a majority, though it was not clear if those promises would be kept or reneged as in the case of releasing funds for the Chennai Metro Rail project.
Also a Union Budget should aim at addressing the needs and requirements of the people of the whole country, he said, referring to his own philosophy to serve those who voted for his party and also those who did not vote for it through the implementation of welfare schemes.
The BJP government’s Budget had no mention of even ‘Tamil Nadu’ in it, leave alone having no special schemes for the State or the release of funds for the Metro Rail that had been pending for three years, launch of schemes announced earlier like the railway projects, the Metro Rail for Madurai and Coimbatore and the flyover connecting Tambaram and Chengalpattu, he said.
To a question if the State was being neglected because the DMK-led alliance romped home in the elections winning all the 40 seats, Stalin said that the BJP was still seething with anger for the election results but expressed the confidence that the State would manage its affairs as it had been doing so far.
He also said the DMK would take the fight for securing the rights of the people and getting its due entitlements to the people forum and all the members of Parliament from the State had been given the freedom to launch the protest.
In his reaction to the Budget, he said that Seethraman seemed to have taken a carbon copy of Tamil Nadu’s budget and reproduced it since many of the welfare schemes announced were the same of the State’s programmes like starting of ITI, women’s hostels and workers’ hostels.He specifically pointed out that the State’s demand for Rs 37,000 crore to compensate losses incurred due to the two natural disasters that struck the State one after the other in 2023 had not been acceded to - the Union Government released only Rs 276 crore - while the Budget had made provisions for funds to the tune of Rs 11,000 crore to prevent natural disasters in Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh and Assam.
