CHENNAI: AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa breathed fire and brimstone against arch-rival M Karunanidhi and his family in the last leg of her campaign for the coming Assembly elections.
Apart from the sustained personal attack on the DMK patriarch, she also targeted his partymen for letting the state run by ‘rowdy gangs’ in the past five years.
The AIADMK chief addressed considerable crowds across South Chennai, apart from making a number of unscheduled stops to talk to small crowds that had gathered along the way to greet her.
Jayalalithaa attacked Karunanidhi on a number of fronts, ranging from power cuts, corruption, law and order and economic stagnation.
“Karunanidhi has given TVs worth Rs 2,000 to the people so that his family can collect over Rs 1,000 a year from each family. This is the extent to which he and his family have plotted against you,” Jayalalithaa told a huge crowd at Perungudi.
“Karunanidhi is the only Chief Minister in the history of India to have been given the certificate of practising ‘scientific corruption’ by a respected judge. That was 35 years back,” she added.
Terming the DMK an ‘empire of corruption’, she urged the people of Tamil Nadu to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the elections and pronounce a sentence against the DMK and its ‘corrupt ways’.
Jayalalithaa also attacked Karunanidhi over the rising prices and the power cut. “In my previous regime, prices were under control. There were no power cuts. In fact, Tamil Nadu was a power surplus state. I vow to bring this back when we form the government,” she said.
She accused Karunanidhi of letting the State’s economic and agricultural growth slip. “Is it acceptable to let seven crore people of this state suffer just so one family can prosper? You have to teach them a lesson,” she exhorted.
Jayalalithaa also attacked Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee for terming TN’s financial status ‘sound’.
“Pranab Mukherjee should do his homework before speaking on Tamil Nadu. No one can call a state that has public debt of 1,00,000 crore rupees financially sound.”
All perpetrators of scams and corruption would to taken to the book if her party returned to power in the elections, she added.
