News Brief
Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president K Annamalai came down heavily on the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in a conversation with Kolahala Srinivas. He touched upon multiple domains during the course of the interview like the Rafale watch issue, DMK’s corruption and the failure of the Dravidian model in Tamil Nadu.
Rafale Watch Issue Will Expose DMK’s Corruption
Annamalai said that the Rafale watch has become ‘the weapon’ to expose the corruption of DMK and oust it out of power.
He said, “I could have provided the receipt for the watch and closed the matter immediately, but I didn’t because I wanted everyone to start speaking about it and use the momentum to create a revolution in Tamil Nadu politics.
“The revolution would be the ushering in of transparent politics as I would be declaring my financial details and putting forth the list of DMK ministers’ assets which as I have said amounts to around Rs 2 lakh crore.
“Rs 2 lakh crore is not a small figure. If you run through the numbers, the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) of the state is approximately Rs 25 lakh crore. So Rs 2 lakh crore is nearly 10 per cent of the GSDP.”
Anti-Corruption Movement in Tamil Nadu Will Be A People’s Movement
Regarding the app and website, he had announced during the Rafale row, Annamalai said, “The common man in Tamil Nadu has got so used to corruption that he has got bored of talking about it. People in the villages think that I am going to work in the morning, returning at night and getting paid for my labour, so why to talk about corruption? Corruption is not my problem. It is a problem of the business people and industrialists who have to pay commissions.
“By launching a website and an app and making it convenient for people to report corruption, the people will feel that they too have participated in the anti-corruption movement. In most places, common people know that so and so property or company or liquor making unit is held benami by a DMK leader but they do not care. Now that the BJP is taking up the issue strongly, they will come forward.”
Nature of the DMK Party
Regarding the nature of the DMK, he said that it a party centred around a family and run like a private limited company that exists for profits.
He said that there is competition amongst leaders to show their closeness to the family.
“While the older leaders like Durai Murugan and K Ponmudy are competing to sit in the Chief Minister’s car, the younger leaders like V Senthil Balaji, KN Nehru And Anbil Mahesh are competing with each other to be the number 2 to Udhayanidhi Stalin.”
Further, he added “Whatever they are doing, including targeting me on the Rafale watch, is to please Udhayanidhi.”