Chennai: Launching a scathing attack on the Union Government, Chief Minister M K Stalin said that two recent tragedies betrayed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cavalier attitude towards the people of the country as he took no steps to protect the pilgrims at the Kumbh Mela and did nothing when the US administration deported 104 Indian citizens in a dehumanizing manner by clamping manacles in the legs and hands and dumping them inside a defense aircraft.
Addressing members of the public at Avadi in Tiruvallur district on Saturday at one of the many such meetings organized by the DMK all over the State to condemn the Narendra Modi government that had shortchanged Tamil Nadu in the Union Budget, Stalin said 46 persons were killed in the stampede at the Kumbh Mela in Uttar Pradesh only because the government provided no security for them.
Though JCB earth removers were used to clear the bodies, as Samajwadi Party president Akilesh Yadav had alleged, the Union Government was playing down the tragedy by claiming that only 30 persons had died when the media had estimated the numbers to have exceeded 48 and even refusing to allow a discussion on it in Parliament, he said.
After inviting the people to attend the Kumbh Mela in large numbers, the communal politics had fallen silent on the catastrophe in the same fashion in which a silence was being maintained on the deportation of Indians by the US administration under President Donald Trump, for whom Modi had campaigned and called him a friend, he said.
Pointing out that the Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, instead of taking up with the US government the denigration of those deported Indians whose narration of their plight was heart-rending, was unfortunately justifying the ill-treatment, Stalin wondered if that was all that an internationally acclaimed ‘Viswa Guru, who enhanced the respect for India at the global level through his foreign jaunts, could do to the citizens of his country.
The Chief Minister listed out the various ways in which the Union Government had betrayed the State and mocked the proposal to give loans to the State but not funds. What kind of family would it be if the father says that he would lend money to children but not provide for their education, dress and food, he asked.
Covering the entire gamut of differences with the Union Government, he took swipes at the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Governor R N Ravi, whom he accused of being recalcitrant even after the Prime Minister had advised him to behave himself, Stalin said the BJP was trying to disrupt the communal harmony of the State through its machinations instead of releasing the funds due to it and for ameliorating the losses caused by natural disasters.
He said that the Union Government was disposing of all that the State government proposed schemes like thoe to reduce the disparity among the people, to achieve economic growth, increase revenue collections and had put the State’s economy in a precarious condition through a series of detrimental actions like reducing fund allocation and removal of subsidies.
Stalin made use of the occasion to launch his election campaign for the 2026 Assembly polls. Taking pride in the DMK being the defender of the State’s rights always, he said that what the party proposed now would be seconded by the entire nation tomorrow.
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