Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK president M.K. Stalin on Saturday said the state should “pay back in the same coin” to the BJP-led Centre in the upcoming Assembly elections for allegedly allocating nothing to Tamil Nadu in the Union Budget.
Addressing the southern regional conference of DMK Youth Wing functionaries in Virudhunagar, Stalin said that despite Tamil Nadu ranking among the top states in development indices, the Union Budget offered “virtually nothing” to the state.
“It was expected that there would be at least some election-time concessions. But even that hope proved futile. What we received was a wet towel,” he remarked.
Stalin listed several pending demands, including the release of SSA and disaster relief funds, Metro Rail and Jal Jeevan Mission allocations, approval for the Hosur airport project, new railway lines, AIIMS for Madurai, exemption from NEET, protection of Tamil Nadu’s Lok Sabha seats during delimitation, and the release of the Keezhadi excavation report.
“We are asking only for what is legitimately due to us. But the Centre has given us zero,” he said.
Calling for a repeat of the 2024 Lok Sabha verdict when the BJP-led NDA failed to win any seat in Tamil Nadu, Stalin urged voters to defeat not just the BJP but the entire NDA in the Assembly polls.
Reiterating DMK’s ideological pillars of social justice, self-respect and state autonomy, he warned against Hindi imposition through the three-language formula and said states continued to be denied real powers in India’s federal structure.
He also attacked AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami, accusing him of failing to defend Tamil Nadu’s rights and acting as a subordinate ally of the BJP.