With defeat in the upcoming assembly election a foregone conclusion for the BJP, poll-bound Tamil Nadu has been ignored in the Union Budget with no significant schemes or projects for the state, Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin said on Wednesday.
“For the last 11 years, they have been discriminating without any special project. Why so? Maybe, they know the election result in advance that they will, however, hand out defeat. Hence, they could have thought, why earmark financial allocation for them? That is the truth. True, for it is we who are going to win,” Stalin said, addressing the conclusion of the 10,000th camp of ‘Ungaludan Stalin’ (Stalin with You), bringing government services to the doorsteps, at Tindivanam in Villupuram district.
“It used to be a clever strategy of the BJP to earmark more than the usual financial allocation for states going to polls. Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha received financial allocation only thus. The BJP’s hatred for Tamil and Tamil Nadu runs so deep that, though the state is awaiting elections, the saffron party is not even prepared to do the usual stunt performed in other states,” he charged.
The BJP and the principal opposition, AIADMK, are part of the NDA in Tamil Nadu along with minor parties like the AMMK of TTV Dhinakaran and the Tamil Maanila Congress of GK Vasan.
Charging the saffron party and its allies with placing all kinds of obstacles all the time to block the development of the state, he cited the Union budget as a recent example of that. “There is nothing in the Budget for Tamil Nadu. Till now, they used to cite a couplet from Thirukkural (composed by the Sangam era sage poet Thiruvalluvar), and now, even that has been dispensed with. There is not even a single development project for Tamil Nadu, even for namesake. Our persistent demands have been completely ignored,” Stalin said.
Maintaining that Tamil Nadu is the second largest economy in the country and the most urbanised with more industries, providing tax revenue liberally, he said that despite such a state badly requiring new highways, railway lines, metro rail, and other infrastructure, the Union Government returns only peanuts in return.