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Jaya charges Karunanidhi with spreading falsehoods on power ordinance

All India Anna DMK general secretary J Jayalalitha today launched a vituperative attack against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi for spreading a "false campaign" that the Centre had demanded scrapping the free power supply scheme to farmers and that the AIADMK was a party to it.

In a letter to party cadres, she said both Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and Union Power Minister Rangarajan Kumaramangalam had categorically stated that the recent central ordinance on power was not aimed at cancelling supply of free power to the farmers. But Karunanidhi approaches the issue with selfish interests, she added.

Calling upon the party workers to defeat the campaign, she said Karunanidhi was posing as a friend of farmers. "We must rip off his mask and expose his true colours," she said.

Denying his charge that she had cancelled free power to the farmers during her tenure as chief minister, she recalled her declaration in the state assembly that the scheme would not be given up during the AIADMK regime. When doubts were raised over its scrapping soon after the ordinance was promulgated, she had categorically condemned any move by the Centre to stop the supply of free power, she said.

In an obvious reference to Tamil Maanila Congress president G K Moopanar's charge that state Electricity Minister Arcot N Veerasamy was not aware of the ground reality in the villages where farmers were hit by power cuts, Jayalalitha said Karunanidhi had staged a drama to create an impression that the Centre was against the free power scheme, so as to prevent the ally from opting out of the DMK front in frustration.

On the government's move to convene an all-party meeting on the issue, she alleged that Karunanidhi was trying to instigate the farmers to an agitation under the "canopy" of an all-party meeting.

"Why should Karunanidhi, who did not convene an all-party meeting before sending state law minister Aladi Aruna to the new Delhi meeting in 1996, now convene such a meeting?" she wanted to know.

Aruna, who had attended the meeting on behalf of the chief minister to discuss the setting up of central and state electricity regulatory commissions, had indeed given his consent for their establishment, she said quoting Kumaramangalam.

UNI

EARLIER REPORTS:
DMK will not scrap free power scheme for farmers despite ordinance
Jaya, Kumaramangalam in power struggle
BJP did not consult us before cancelling free power supply to farmers, charges Jaya

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