With the opposition AIADMK general secretary Edappadi Palaniswami throwing the gauntlet at Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin for a one-on-one debate on the welfare and development programmes without any notes, Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi had accepted the challenge.

“If invited, I am prepared for a debate,” was Udhayanidhi’s response to a question from reporters after he distributed ‘Champions Kit’ to resident sportspersons at the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu (SDAT) at an event here on Monday.

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To another query on EPS’ criticism about the state government naming government schemes and projects after the late DMK patriarch and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, he shot back asking “Whose name should they have? Tell me? Criticism will be there. We are christening them after whom they should be.”

On the issue of naming government schemes, only the other day, the Chief Minister too had responded saying, “It is only appropriate to name them after the visionary Kalaignar (Karunanidhi) who had toiled to develop the state. Should they be named after you, who had crawled like a cockroach to grab power?”

Further, squarely blaming EPS for the successive electoral defeats of the AIADMK, Stalin said “Your arrogance is the reason why people are handing out successive defeats in elections.”

While the Chief Minister accused his predecessor EPS of being a ‘habitual liar’, the AIADMK leader, also Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, while interacting with the media on Sunday had challenged Stalin for a one-on-one debate as to whose regime carried out welfare programmes without faking them.

“The Chief Minister should not use any notes (reference material) like me. Let the people judge,” was the condition put forth by EPS, who claimed that while he was a self-made organic leader who had risen from the ranks, Stalin was pushed to the top by his father. “Without his father, Karunanidhi, Stalin could not even win a councilor’s post in a corporation election,” he claimed further.