The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu on Friday attacked the Centre over a range of issues and said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will not win a single seat in the southern state in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
DMK leaders, during a launch of a series of public meetings titled ‘Urimaigalai Meetka Stalinin Kural’ (Stalin’s voice to retrieve rights) across the 37 Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in Puducherry, also said the “bad days for BJP have started”, as it welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the 2018 electoral bond scheme of political funding.
Addressing a public meeting at Ottapidaram in her Thoothukudi constituency, senior DMK leader and Lok Sabha MP Kanimozhi said: “India will lose if BJP retains power (in the Lok Sabha elections). Their victory is this country’s loss.”
Though the BJP is now claiming it would win over 400 seats in the hustings, “we have to be confident that there will be a regime change,” she said and referred to the BJP’s loss in recent state elections, including Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh.
Kanimozhi also accused the Centre of “snatching the rights of the state”. “When it is either introducing a bill or a policy, the Union government is snatching the rights of the state. Or they will give it a name which we do not understand and cannot even pronounce,” she said at another meeting in Tirunelveli district.
{{/usCountry}}Kanimozhi also accused the Centre of “snatching the rights of the state”. “When it is either introducing a bill or a policy, the Union government is snatching the rights of the state. Or they will give it a name which we do not understand and cannot even pronounce,” she said at another meeting in Tirunelveli district.
{{/usCountry}}“We requested them several times to name schemes in a language that we understand too. But, they don’t care about us…They are naming it in Hindi and Sanskrit,” she added.
The southern states allege institutional and political injustice on the fiscal federalism front, highlighting the growing tension between the Centre and non-BJP ruled states. The arguments are centred around two points; a continuous fall in the share of these states in central taxes, and the Centre allegedly holding back non-formula driven grants and project support, due to what these states allege is political vendetta.
Kanimozhi also referred to the Centre’s recent decision to rename the three criminal laws. “The BJP-led Union government is bringing to question our state’s rights, identity and respect,” she said.
DMK’s organising secretary Bharathi, who addressed a similar meeting in Villupuram district, said the “BJP will not win a single seat in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Delhi” in the general elections.
On the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the electoral bond scheme, Bharathi said: “The bad days for BJP have started”.
There was no immediate reaction available from the BJP.