Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin on Thursday alleged that the Centre is using women’s reservation as a “weapon” to tackle the Opposition before taking up the delimitation exercise. Responding to it, the opposition parties in the state, BJP and AIADMK, said the CM should first clarify whether his party supports women’s reservation or not.
“The Union government is not concerned about implementing reservations for women. If their concerns were genuine, they could have done it right away. Rather than doing that, the BJP-led Centre is thinking of using it as a weapon to tackle the opposition and take up the delimitation exercise based on population,” Stalin told news agency PTI.
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The DMK leader also said the women’s reservation must be implemented immediately without portraying delimitation as a reason. The CM said the DMK was the first to assert the rights of Tamil Nadu after realising the state would be affected by the proposed exercise. He demanded that the delimitation should be frozen on the 1971 Census population for “fairness.”
“We urged the Union government that states that successfully implemented population control programmes must not be punished,” he added.
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He also alleged that AIADMK chief Edappadi K Palaniswami has been “mute” over the delimitation issue.
Referring to Stalin’s comments, BJP spokesperson Narayanan Thirupathy said, “Mr Stalin should first clear whether the DMK supports women’s reservation or not. In our country, every six months, somewhere or other, elections are being held. So, he is using it as a lame excuse that during the election period, they are trying to keep the session”.
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He added that Stalin should accept that he does not want women’s reservation.
On Stalin attacking Palaniswami over the delimitation exercise, AIADMK national spokesperson Kovai Sathiya said, “At the party meeting led by the DMK, our party said that Tamil Nadu’s share of 7.16% should not be changed. But intentionally, while preparing the minutes of the meeting, they [DMK] omitted the suggestion given by the AIADMK.”
Sathiya said DMK is playing cheap politics. “(Union home minister) Amit Shah clearly said that there will be no effect on Tamil Nadu due to delimitation,” he said.
