Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president K Annamalai said that workers of the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) were interfering in the distribution of tokens to beneficiaries of the Pongal gift hamper.

To avail the gift hamper, the beneficiaries, i.e., the approximately 2 crore rice rationcard holders and 19000 Sri Lankan Tamils living in camps across the state, were asked to collect tokens from the ration shops.

The Tamil Nadu government had started the distribution of tokens on 3 January and the handing over gift hampers is to start from 9 January.

He said that a video has surfaced in which people of Ponnaiya Rajapuram area of Coimbatore district alleged that all the Pongal gift tokens were given to the DMK and in Thirumullaivoyal, according to information from social media, the people are being forced to collect their tokens from the local DMK councillors.

Further, he said that the DMK government has gone to the extent of penalising the ration shop workers, instead of reining in its own party-men who are the troublemakers.

This year’s gift hamper contains one kilogram of raw rice, one kilogram of sugar and one piece of sugarcane. The beneficiaries would also receive Rs 1000 in cash.

Sugarcane was included after farmers across the state protested saying that their earnings would be badly affected if the government did not procure their produce for the scheme.

Few days back, the Kisan Morcha of the state BJP had held a protest in Karur, demanding the inclusion of coconut in the gift hamper, in order to support coconut growers.

Political observers have also been asking the rationale behind distributing the monetary component of Rs 1000 in cash, instead of transferring the money into bank accounts.

Last year, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government had done away with the cash component and instead distributed a gift hamper of 20 items— raw rice, jaggery, cashew nuts, dry grapes, cardamom, moong dal, ghee required for preparing sweet pongal, turmeric powder, chilli powder, coriander powder, mustard, jeera, pepper, tamarind, Bengal gram, urad dal, rava, wheat flour, salt and a cloth bag.

The gift scheme was marred by many complaints of poor quality of items in the kit, especially jaggery, leading to allegations of ‘Pongal scam.’

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