Chennai: Two senior Congress functionaries from South Tamil Nadu on Sunday asserted that the Congress was very much a “viable force” in Sivagangai parliamentary constituency and “will continue to remain one under the leadership of Mr P Chidambaram.”
In a rejoinder to the DC story titled “Why Chidambaram failed to safeguard Congress bastion”, published on April 3, Mr P Sathyamoorthi, Sivagangai district Congress president and Mr T. Pushparaj, former MLA and Pudukkottai district Congress president, said, “We are deeply disappointed to see the correspondent file a biased story at the behest of vested interests.”
Terming the story as “malicious, false and devoid of facts”, the office-bearers regretted that the two people who have been extensively quoted in the story, Mr Duraikarunanithi and Mr Ayothi, “are members of the breakaway fringe political party TMC and the antecedence and background of these two persons is questionable.”
“Mr Duraikarunanithi is a washed up local functionary who has no influence even in his panchayat. He was questioned in the murder of the former DMK Youth Wing secretary Rousseau. There are PCR cases against him. Further, he has availed loans from nationalised banks which have gone bad,” the two DCC presidents said. “Secondly, Mr Ayothi is a known history-sheeter and his only claim to fame is that he pastes posters of Mr G.K. Vasan. There are cases of cheating against him, wherein a person from Madurai has alleged that he has taken money promising a position in the Port Trust during Mr Vasan’s tenure as Union shipping minister,” they said.
The office-bearers said the report had “completely ignored” the fact that in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when the Congress contested without any alliance partners, there were only two constituencies in the entire State (Sivagangai and Kanyakumari), “where the Congress polled over one lakh votes in each. Karti P. Chidambaram secured more votes than all former ministers, including the current TNCC president.”
The office-bearers also refuted Mr Sethuraman’s contention that there are 20 lakh votes in the five Assembly segments of Sivagangai, Karaikudi, Manamadurai, Tiruppathur and Ilayankudi. “The total votes in the entire parliamentary constituency of six Assembly segments are only 14 lakh.”
Denying the charge of “nepotism” against P. Chidambaram, the Congress office-bearers said, “Nothing can be farther from the truth. In fact, the only time his son Karti P. Chidambaram, who has a long track record in party politics, contested was during the challenging 2014 election and not during one of the safe elections.”
The Congress office-bearers also pointed out that in 1989, the Sivaganga Assembly ticket was given to Sudharsana Natchiyappan, who is also a Congress man. “Many opportunities were given to Udayappan, who lost the 1998, 1999 (Lok Sabha) elections from Ramanathapuram and 2001 (Assembly) elections from Karaikudi, they pointed out.
As regards the “Sivaganga Congress Welfare Trust”, the office-bearers said “it is a private trust constituted by Hon. Mr P Chidambaram and many average and poor workers benefited regularly from it, including Mr Jeyachandran who continues to be ardent supporter of Mr. P. Chidambaram and enjoys his patronage,” the office-bearers said. While attaching a “list of achievements” in the constituency, the Congress district functionaries said the correspondent had failed to “get our view” on the issues raised.
