Chennai: It was during the 10-year tenure of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that a plethora of path-breaking legislations like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a law to prevent violence against women, Right to Information Act and Right to Education were passed in Parliament and Tamil Nadu too benefitted through several measures initiated by him, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Tuesday.
Speaking at an event organized by the Congress Party to unveil portraits of Manmohan Singh and former Union Minister E V K S Elangovan at the Kamaraj Arangam in Chennai, Stalin said the long time demand of the DMK to accord Tamil the Classical Language status was acceded during Singh’s tenure that the State also saw sanction for the Chennai Metro Rail, over 6000 km long highways and many such development schemes coming its way.
That way, Singh’s passing was a loss to the State, he said, adding that he was a strong pillar for the Congress party as much as Elangovan, hailing from the traditional political family of Periyar E V Ramasamy, was a pillar from the Tamil Nadu Congress.
Paying tributes to both the leaders, he said Singh was not a career politician but one who took revolutionary steps when was the Finance Minister and then the Prime Minister, paving the way for modern India.
He also recalled that during the 10 year stint of Singh as Prime Minister 21 leaders from Tamil Nadu were inducted into the Union Ministry, eight in the Cabinet rank and 13 of them as Ministers of State, the highest representation the State enjoyed in history.
Stalin remembered Elangovan as the one who described the present government as the ‘real Kamaraj Rule’ when he was speaking about the DMK government in various platforms after his election to the Erode East constituency in the by-election caused by the demise of his son Thirumagan Evera.
