Tamil Nadu CM, MK Stalin takes a dig at PM Modi
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Thursday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not giving the rights due for States and that it seemed like he thought of States as municipalities. Stalin was speaking about the predicament of Chief Ministers, who are compelled to demonstrate against the Center for their due rights.
Stalin: Prime Minister regards states as municipalities
He also mentioned former Prime Minister V P Singh and said that he respected state sovereignty by not arranging for Chief Ministers to visit the nation’s capital. “But Prime Minister Narendra Modi is regarding states as municipalities. He doesn’t seem to like States or Chief Ministers, though he had been Chief Minister of Gujarat before becoming Prime Minister,” Stalin said in his video address to his Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan, who led a protest in New Delhi today “to protect federalism.”
He noted that the worst political situation in the nation was chief ministers protesting for their rights in Delhi. On Wednesday, Karnataka chief minister Siddharamaiah organized a protest in Jantar Mantar, accusing the central government of engaging in economic oppression.
Discriminatory approach by Central government
Stalin said that the days when the Modi led government has to respond are not far off, adding that the DMK MPs have also voiced their opposition to the ‘discriminatory approach’ taken by the Central government in distributing funds to the States.
The chief minister asserted that the first act Modi took as prime minister was to deny the states their legal, fiscal, linguistic, and educational rights. “Depriving the states of their financial rights amounts to cutting off oxygen supply. This is what the BJP government is doing. The Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states should not think that this is something peculiar to the opposition party-ruled States. You will suffer the same fate tomorrow,” Stalin said in his speech.
Stalin accuses centre of “authoritarian rule”
He said that the Left Democratic government led by the CPI (M) and the Chief Minister of Kerala were in agreement with the Tamil Nadu government’s steadfast opposition to the “authoritarian rule” of the Central government.
According to the Constitution, the state legislature alone was responsible for using public debt to pay for state expenditures, he said. He continued, though, that the current regime at the Center was limiting the amount of money that States could borrow for development projects.
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