Lok Sabha polls | BJP candidate’s poll promise of Statehood for Puducherry is mere rhetoric: former MP

Former MP criticizes BJP candidate's Statehood promise for Puducherry as mere rhetoric lacking sincerity and concrete plans.

M. Ramadass, former MP and president of Puducherry Maanila Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam, has said that the Statehood promise of incumbent Home Minister and BJP candidate for the Lok Sabha elections, A. Namassivayam, was “old wine in an old bottle,” and was aimed at hoodwinking electors.

In a statement, Mr. Ramadass said the BJP candidate seemed to lack an understanding of the underlying principle of Statehood while making such a promise. His assurance to take up the issue of Statehood and the inclusion of the Union Territory in the purview of the Finance Commission were not two different issues but only one: as Statehood would automatically bring Puducherry under the ambit of the Commission, he added.

However, the question, Mr. Ramadass said, was whether the candidate, as Home Minister of the Union Territory, should be elected to Parliament to take up the Statehood issue. He wanted to know whether as a key figure in the BJP and a member of the party’s national executive no less, Mr. Namassivayam had ever used his influence to demand Statehood or broached the issue with the Prime Minister or Home Minister in the last three years.

Only if he or the Chief Minister could persuade the BJP to include granting Statehood to Puducherry within one year in its election manifesto, would it lend credibility to the promise, he pointed. In the absence of any sign of sincerity, the sudden assurance of Statehood on the eve of elections was pure rhetoric, Mr. Ramadass said.

The former MP also said the claim that with the BJP at the Centre and in an alliance government in Puducherry, having an elected representative also from the same party, would benefit the U.T. was “patently wrong and misleading” as the coalition government was still headed by the AINRC.

Mr. Namassivayam had failed to make any mention about the continuation of the electricity department in its present form, the proper implementation of Smart City schemes or the reformation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to ensure 100 days of rural employment, and not 20 days as of now.

The BJP’s candidate had also made no mention of the integration of five textile-related mills into a single corporation or establishing a textile park providing employment to 20,000 persons, linking Puducherry with all State capitals through railways, completing the East Coast Railway Project or the holding of local body elections, which have been pending for over 13 years, Mr. Ramadass said.