CHENNAI: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman alleged that the DMK was raking up the issue of delimitation by ignoring Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance that the exercise will not result in injustice to any state since it wanted to hide its governance failure and deteriorating law and order situation in Tamil Nadu and gain political mileage ahead of 2026 Assembly election.
In an interaction with a group of journalists on Saturday, when the ruling DMK had hosted a meeting of leaders from six states to discuss the potential impact of the impending delimitation, Sitharaman said the meeting was also a manifestation of the contradictions and fissures within the INDIA bloc and the perception of other parties in the alliance that the Congress did not have capable leadership to lead the alliance.
On the DMK’s demand that the BJP should clarify that the delimitation would not be based on population, she contended that the Prime Minister and Home Minister Amit Shah have already offered broad assurance that there would be no unfairness and stressed that the method and other specific details about the exercise can be decided only by the Delimitation Commission, an autonomous Constitutional body, which will have to be constituted after the census. She said, just as with the Finance Commission, the political parties will have to make their case before the Delimitation Commission.
She further highlighted that the existence of Lok Sabha constituencies like Ladakh and Lakshadweep with extremely small populations is already a proof that the Constitution has offered necessary room for flexibility so that population does not have to be the only factor to provide representation.
Alleging hypocrisy on the part of DMK and its allies, she asked if they were opposed to population-based census, why did they not oppose Rahul Gandhi’s campaign slogan of “jitna abadi, utna haq” (the rights of every group be proportionate to their share in population).
Regarding the ongoing controversy over Union government’s “refusal” to release its share for the Samagra Shiksha scheme to Tamil Nadu, she reiterated that the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to implement PM SHRI scheme in school education is a must for the fund release.
Speaking later at an event organised by the Chennai Citizen’s Forum at MOP Vaishnav College for Women regarding the Union budget, she took a veiled dig at the DMK and said, “I won’t discuss corruption here, only the budget.”