NDA Is Now New Delhi Alliance: Trichy Siva

Chennai: DMK deputy general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Trichi Siva said the BJP-led NDA may get a new nomenclature as ‘New Delhi Alliance’ as it is an attempt to rule Tamil Nadu from the national capital and the AIADMK is also a part of this alliance run by the BJP from New Delhi.

Speaking to mediapersons at the DMK headquarters on Wednesday, Siva said it was a cheap trick to convene Parliament at election time and accused the AIADMK of supporting bills introduced in Parliament by the BJP Union Government, which has persistently betrayed and held grudges against Tamil Nadu.

He said that since coming to power at the Centre, the BJP has introduced laws against the rights of the states and is willing to impose Hindi through the New Education Policy, which will take the education system backwards and will not do any good to the students, adding that Tamil Nadu has introduced a State Education Policy against this move.

He said that for a law to come into force, the bill has to pass through Parliament and State legislatures, but for a policy to be passed, such procedures need not be followed, which ensures that education policy is not tabled in Parliament.

However, he said that DMK, apart from creating an alternative state policy, was also fighting the National Education Policy. He said that since the beginning of its tenure, the BJP government has continuously betrayed Tamil Nadu and referred to the recent controversy over Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis telling the people of Madurai to vote for the BJP if they want Metro Rail.

He said that the reason why the Union Government did not approve the Metrorail project for Madurai and Coimbatore was that although a few less populated cities in North India such as Nagpur, Gurugram and so on had been given permission for implementation of Metrorail projects, the two cities did not have the mandatory population of 20 lakh to qualify for implementation.

Siva also compared the progress of work on the construction of AIIMS in Madurai, where only 30 per cent of the work has been completed in the last few years, after the hospital project was announced in 2015, with the hospitals announced for Jammu and Kashmir, Guwahati and Korakpur becoming operational.

Tamil Nadu is competing not only with other states of the country but also with the Union Government in the implementation of development projects, he said, citing a report by NITI Aayog that found the States of Tamil Nadu and Kerala at the top in industrialisation, public welfare programmes, women’s safety and education.

Tamil Nadu’s allocation to rural development was 11.2 per cent of its revenue against the Union Government’s 3.28 per cent, and the situation was the same in all ministries such as Agriculture (18.5% against the Centre’s 2.63%) and education (22.3% against New Delhi’s 2.6%).