Jaya lashes out at BJP and DMK on power reforms

Jaya lashes out at BJP and DMK on power reforms
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

MAR 4: AIADMK general secretary Jayalalitha today lashed out at both the BJP and the DMK for trying to cancel the free power supply to farmers and said both these ``anti-farmer and anti-people forces should be removed from power in the coming state assembly elections.''

``Prime Minister A B Vajpayee's reiteration yesterday that supply of free electricity to farmers should be cancelled deserves to be unequivocally condemned,'' she said in a statement here.

``It is most baneful and painful that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, instead of attending the Chief Ministers' conference in Delhi yesterday to discuss the cancellation of free electricity to farmers, undertakes a tour to participate in government functions.''

She said when the BJP assumed power at the centre with AIADMK support in 1998, it had promulgated an ordinance providing for setting up a Central Electricity Regulatory Commission and State Electricity Regulatory Commissions without consulting her party,

``I had then categorically declared that the ordinance is unacceptable to us. I spoke to Vajpayee and got the clause, which concerned cancellation of free electricity, deleted from the draft.'' Jayalalitha said when the United Front government, in which DMK was a constituent, was in office in 1996, Tamil Nadu Minister Aladi Aruna had consented to set up a State Electricity Restructuring Commission in December that year.

After AIADMK's protests to the 1998 ordinance, Vajpayee had explained to her that there were no `anti-farmer aspects' in the ordinance. He also said that if state governments so desired, they could continue the free supply scheme.

``After categorically informing Vajpayee that the ordinance should not be passed in Parliament, I withdrew our party's support to the government for working against the interests of Tamil nadu, the Nation, the peasantry and the poor and the downtrodden'.

The Vajpayee government had now gone back on itscommitment by stating that power supply to farmers should be charged, hitting farmers 'below the belt'.

Karunanidhi had once again 'betrayed' the farming communityand had gone along with the centre's move to cancel supply of free power to them, she said and appealed to the people to remove such 'ant-farmer' and 'anti-people' forces from power in the coming state assembly polls.