Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annamalai took DMK to cleaners in an interview calling it a private limited company. He alleged that the worth of DMK first family and ministers amounts to Rs 2 lakh crore, which would be 10% of the state GDP. Annamalai was recently targeted for wearing an imported watch with corruption allegations leveled against him.
A few days ago, TN Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji had accused Annamalai of wearing a Bell & Ross special edition Rafale watch, a costly imported watch which he got as a ‘gift’. He demanded Annamalai to produce the bill to prove his innocence. Annamalai had earlier talked about corruption in contracts and tenders in the Electricity Department. Thus the minister’s accusations were seen as a personal attack on Annamalai.
While assuring that he will produce the bill at the right time and put out all the documents regarding his income and properties for public scrutiny, he questioned whether the DMK first family and ministers would do the same. He said “I’ll release property documents worth Rs 2 lakh crore showing details about watches worn by CM, his son-in-law soon”.
Recently in an interview to Kolahalas TV YouTube channel, he called DMK “a private limited company worth Rs 2 lakh crore which is 10% of the state GDP”. Talking about the watch issue Annamalai said that he could have shared the bill at that moment but chose to turn it into a weapon against DMK corruption. “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”, he said.
He further said that it will revolutionize TN politics as he will be declaring his assets in public and revealing details of assets owned by DMK leaders which amounts to Rs 2 lakh crores. “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 percent of the GSDP”, he said.
He also revealed his intention to launch a website and app for common man’s use, to report and know about corruption in the state. As opposed to the common man’s belief that corruption only affects the rich and those in trade and business, it affects the poor the most, Annamalai said. Because corruption deprives the government of funds leading to lack of development.
“The money swindled becomes unavailable for development. The result is poor quality of government schools, government hospitals and road infrastructure. This is the reality of the DMK’s Dravidian model”, Annamalai reasoned. He feels that BJP taking up the corruption issue will make the public talk and question the Dravidian Model governance. When asked about the nature of DMK, he said that it is a private limited company centered around a family.
Everything done by leaders of the party, except the first family, is to please the latter, he said. He felt that even the attack on him for wearing the Rafale watch was to please Udayanidhi Stalin, who is considered to be next in line for CMship.
