Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Thursday alleged that the Center is using women’s reserves as a “weapon” to confront dissent before embarking on the demarcation process. In response, the state’s opposition parties, BJP and AIADMK, said the chief minister should first clarify whether his party supports women’s reservation or not.
“The Union government is not worried about implementing reservations for women. If their concerns were real, they could have done it immediately. Instead of doing so, the BJP-led Center is thinking of using it as a weapon to take on the opposition and undertake population-based delimitation,” Stalin told news agency PTI.
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The DMK leader also said that reservation for women should be implemented immediately without portraying demarcation as the reason. The CM said the DMK was the first to assert the rights of Tamil Nadu after realizing that the state would be affected by the proposed exercise. He called for the need to freeze the demarcation of borders based on the 1971 population census for the sake of “justice.”
“We have urged the Union government not to punish countries that have successfully implemented population control programmes,” he added.
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He also alleged that AIADMK chief Edappadi K Palaniswami was “silent” on the demarcation issue.
Referring to Stalin’s comments, BJP spokesperson Narayanan Thirupathi said: “Mr. Stalin should first clarify whether the TDP supports women’s reservation or not. In our country, elections are held every six months, in one place or the other. So, he is using it as a lame excuse that they are trying to keep the session during the election period.”
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He added that Stalin had to accept that he did not want to detain women.
Regarding Stalin’s attack on Palaniswami over the delimitation process, AIADMK spokesperson Kovai Satya said, “In the DMK-led party meeting, our party said that Tamil Nadu’s 7.16% quota should not be changed. But deliberately, while preparing the minutes of the meeting, they [DMK] I have deleted the proposal made by the AIADMK.”
Satya said the DMK is playing cheap politics. “(Union Home Minister) Amit Shah clearly said that there will be no impact on Tamil Nadu due to demarcation,” he said.
