CHENNAI: DMK president M K Stalin on Friday attacked Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay over rising prices, asking whether he was aware of the hardships people face while being "preoccupied with MLA shopping".
During his campaign in Dharapuram in Tiruppur district ahead of the October 6 bypoll, the former CM interacted with traders and residents at a grocery shop to assess the impact of rising prices.
Targeting the state government, Stalin said the prices of essential commodities had risen sharply over the past four months, leaving ordinary households struggling to meet their daily expenses.
He criticised the ruling party's public outreach efforts, questioning whether watching promotional "reels" could feed hungry people, and cited a decline in the state's GST revenue and the departure of experts from Guidance TN as signs of an economic downturn.
"Is the chief minister, who is currently busy with 'MLA shopping', even aware of the plight of common people who are struggling to buy basic groceries?" Stalin said in a social media post.
"Will watching short video clips fill the stomachs of suffering families?" the DMK chief asked in the post on X.
Stalin claimed there was a sharp contrast between Tamil Nadu's past economic performance and its current trajectory, saying the state had maintained steady growth even during periods of national economic slowdown under the "Dravidian model" of governance, while several key indicators had now begun to deteriorate.
He specifically claimed that while GST revenue had increased nationally, Tamil Nadu had witnessed a decline in revenue over the past three months.
Expressing concern over the state's industrial climate, Stalin cited reports of experienced professionals leaving Guidance TN, the state's nodal investment promotion agency, for opportunities in other states.
He claimed that Tamil Nadu was witnessing a decline across several sectors, including the economy, prices of essential commodities, power supply, industrial output, law and order, healthcare and dairy development.
Criticising the government's public relations campaign, Stalin said the administration was merely putting "victory stickers" on projects instead of addressing core governance issues, leaving people to bear the consequences of what he described as administrative apathy.
The DMK has nominated lawyer S Suganya in the SC-reserved Dharapuram Assembly constituency, where a bypoll was necessitated after AIADMK MLA P Sathyabama resigned from the Assembly and joined the ruling TVK.
Sathyabama is contesting the bypoll as the TVK candidate on the party's "whistle" symbol.