Chennai: Lashing out at Governor R N Ravi for his bid to portray the DMK as ‘anti-Constitutional’ when the party was actually making every attempt to uphold the Constitution, protect the nation and safeguard democracy, Chief Minister M K Stalin described the Governor as one not respecting convention and staging a walk out from the Assembly even without standing up for the singing of the national anthem.
Addressing a conference of the DMK’s Legal Wing in Chennai on Saturday, the Chief Minister, however, made an ardent appeal to the Union Government to not transfer Ravi out of the State just because he was opposed to his activities as Governor because his continued presence alone would expose the BJP further.
The BJP’s machinations that included creating false narratives, impelling its minions to speak out in favour of them, using the media to promote those views and spreading rumours through its ‘WhatsApp university’ were being effectively fought against by the DMK’s legal wing that was started in a humble way in 1966 to send lawyers all over the State to legally fight for harassed party workers and leaders, he said.
Referring to the BJP’s ‘One Nation, One Election’ theory, Stalin said that it was aimed at channelizing the powers into the hands of a single individual and pave the way for dictatorship and called up the allies of the BJP to be cautious about falling into the trap.
While it was up to the political parties to support the BJP or not, they should not compromise on supporting moves that would be detrimental to the nation’s federalism and hand over the entire reins of the country to Narendra Modi, he said.
The BJP’s plans would always be drawn with a long term motive and the ‘one nation, one election’ move was to usher in a single election for the country, thus promoting a one language, one culture, one attire, one food system, Stalin alerted the BJP allies and the people of the country.
The ‘one nation, one election’ system was aimed at destroying the States, he said, calling upon the DMK Legal Wing to resist the move. He also urged the legal wing to start a conversation on the need to follow social justice in the appointment of judges.
Acknowledging the role of the legal wing over the years in protecting Tamil Nadu, the Tamil language and the Tamil race, he said it had enabled the DMK to overcome the hurdles thrown at it at different point of time in its 75 year history when the party faced humiliations, insults and also blatant lies.
Some of the historic events that Stalin listed were the 1975 Emergency that saw him and several other party leaders and workers spending more than a year in jail, M Karuanidhi’s infamous midnight arrest and securing permission for the burial of Karunanidhi at the Anna Samadhi premises.
The role of the legal wing in defending the ‘Samacheer Kalvi’ scheme by warding off the bid by the AIADMK to thwart it, in defending the A K Rajan committee set up to stop the irregularities in NEET, 27 per cent OBC reservation in all-India medical seats for graduate and post-graduate students at the national level and many others were also highly laudable, he said.
