TIRUCHY: Rapping Chief Minister MK Stalin, who claims to be a man from Delta, for signing the MoU for methane extraction, AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami on Thursday said that his party saved the Delta region by declaring it Protected Special Agricultural Zone (PSAZ).

Leading a protest against the DMK government in Thanjavur, Palaniswami said while the farmers from the Delta region were in panic about the status of their cultivable lands as there were projects to extract hydrocarbon and methane, the AIADMK government came to their rescue and declared the Delta as PSAZ. It prevented the extraction wells in the region and the farmers heaved a sigh of relief. “Since I myself a farmer, I know the value of agriculture and feel the pain of my fellow farmer,” Palaniswami said.

Recalling the late chief minister J Jayalalithaa’s legal battles to get Cauvery water for Delta Palaniswami said, “The present DMK government failed to get the due share of water from Karnataka government and the Chief Minister Stalin has been sitting as a doll doing nothing.”

EPS also charged that the PWD has not desilted over 6,000 water bodies in the state. Similarly, the construction of check dams that were brought out by the AIADMK government was dropped by the DMK. Similarly, the farmers are forced to give a bribe of Rs 50 per bag of paddy in the Direct Procurement Centres and even after several complaints from the farmers the government has been maintaining an unusual silence.