COIMBATORE: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday accused the DMK of curtailing the welfare schemes of the central government to prevent Prime Minister Narendra Modi from earning the goodwill of people in Tamil Nadu.
Addressing a meeting of party functionaries in Coimbatore, Sitharaman said the central government has been implementing schemes without discrimination, unlike the DMK, which is biased towards people in constituencies where it lost.
“In Tamil Nadu, protests, demonstrations, and black flag agitations have become a regular affair aimed at preventing the implementation of central government schemes. It (the DMK government) operates in such a way that the Prime Minister shouldn’t earn the people's goodwill. The DMK is spreading false propaganda that the central government is not providing funds,” she said.
Stating that even Kerala, where the Communist party-led alliance is in power, has accepted the PM SHRI scheme, but Tamil Nadu continues to oppose, the minister said. The Congress was in power for a long time in Tamil Nadu, but has now become a party that cannot win even a single seat without the DMK alliance, she said.
“So, they (Congress) couldn’t talk about nationalism and only engage in Dravidian politics by aligning with the DMK. But BJP is a party guided by nationalism and spirituality,” she said. Questioning DMK’s claim that it wins polls because of the policies, leadership, and good work of the cadre, Sitharaman asked if that is true, then why does DMK panic over voter list revision?