AIADMK’s alliance with BJP to continue for 2024 Lok Sabha election: Palaniswami

The AIADMK leader said the project had been commissioned at a cost of ₹484 crore by the AIADMK government, but its implementation had been delayed by the DMK for no reason, depriving people of drinking water. Mr. Palaniswami was in Tirunelveli to preside over a wedding function at senior functionary Karuppasamy Pandian’s house

Residents of the Erode (East) Assembly constituency are not even provided with potable water by the DMK government, said AIADMK interim general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Friday.

Speaking to reporters in Tirunelveli, he said that when the AIADMK was in power, it had taken up an exclusive integrated drinking water project at a cost of ₹484 crore for Erode, from the Cauvery River. After the trial runs, when the scheme was to be commissioned, the general elections were announced in May 2021.

Despite the AIADMK demanding that the DMK government to dedicate the project to the public, it has been delayed for no reason at all, he claimed and charged that the government had failed to give even drinking water to the people.

Slamming Chief Minister M.K. Stalin’s “double talk”, Mr. Palaniswami said that when Mr. Stalin was in the Opposition, he had urged the then AIADMK government to release ₹30,000 as compensation per hectare to farmers in the Delta region. But, Mr. Stalin has now announced ₹20,000 per acre as relief to the farmers, who could not harvest their produce due to unexpected rains.

The AIADMK leader said that the alliance with the BJP in Tamil Nadu would continue for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. He also said that the AIADMK had already emerged victorious in the Erode (East) bypoll, scheduled for February 27, as the DMK had dispatched a battery of Ministers there, and CM Stalin is also expected to be there for two days. “The fever has started,” he said.

On the T.N. government’s plan to spend ₹80 crore on the pen memorial for late DMK leader M. Karunanidhi, Mr. Palaniswami said that there was nothing wrong with this, but spending a huge sum of money was a waste. “The DMK can install a pen memorial at a cost of ₹1 crore at their party office and give writing pens worth ₹79 crore to students,” he quipped.

All the allies in the DMK appeared to have gone “on silent mode” as they have stopped airing their views on key issues, the AIADMK leader said and challenged them to come out openly as otherwise, they would earn the wrath of the public.