Ready to face simultaneous elections anytime: CM Palaniswami

A day after the law commission, in its draft report submitted to the Union government, endorsed simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Friday said the AIADMK was ready to face the elections, whenever they were held.

“I feel that a consensus has not been reached on holding simultaneous elections,” he told media persons in Salem.

The ruling AIADMK, whose tenure ends by 2021, has been strongly opposing simultaneous polls ever since the idea was floated by the Centre and a few BJP leaders. 

Palaniswami hit out at opposition parties for levelling corruption and other charges against the AIADMK government. Terming them as an act of vendetta, he said the allegations were made to gain political mileage. 

All sectors in TN were witnessing growth and the State had been receiving honours such as Krishi Karman award for record food grain production from the Centre for good performance, he said.

“They are faulting the government due to political reasons and vendetta. The Amma’s government has been functioning efficiently and all welfare schemes initiated by Amma (late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa) were being implemented expeditiously,” he added.

Palaniswami was responding to a question about repeated corruption charges made by opposition parties and their claim that AIADMK government was subservient to the BJP.

In his address after taking over as DMK president, MK Stalin had on August 28 called the Palaniswami government a “spineless” dispensation which needed to be “thrown out”. DMK had been consistently targeting the AIADMK of being “subservient” to the Centre after the death of Jayalalithaa and compromising on the rights of Tamil Nadu.

To a question on the demand for reverting to holding polls through ballot papers, he said the AIADMK did not see anything wrong in the functioning of electronic voting machines. “As far as we are concerned we have no doubts (on the functioning of EVMs or ballot boxes). We are ready to accept any mode, be it ballot boxes or EVMs.” The AIADMK trusts the people to deliver justice at the hustings irrespective of the mode of voting, he said.

The Chief Minister, while commenting on the controversy over the opening of the Mullaiperiyar dam, reiterated that Kerala government was “deliberately spreading wrong information.” Refuting charges of the Pinarayi Vijayan government, he said that Tamil Nadu was taking steps to strengthen the dam so that water storage could be scaled up to 152 feet in tune with the Supreme Court order of 2014.