Chennai: Continuing his fight against P. Dhanapal after the “unfortunate” events in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Saturday, DMK working president M K Stalin on Monday announced that his party will bring a no confidence motion against the Speaker during the next session.
Two days after alleging that he was beaten up while he and his MLAs were removed from the Assembly, Mr Stalin accused the Speaker of “deliberately harping on his community to malign” the DMK. Mr Dhanapal had accused that DMK MLAs mistreated him because he belonged to scheduled caste.
“When we see that the Speaker is deliberately harping on his community to malign us, it is very regrettable. It is a matter of shame, according to us, for Tamil Nadu. Therefore we will move a no confidence motion (against Dhanapal). Signatures of 34 MLAs are enough for that and the (Assembly) rules mandate that it (motion) should be taken up within 15 days. On that basis, we will be soon giving it,” Mr Stalin said.
Defending his demand for a secret voting to determine the number of MLAs supporting Edappadi K Palanisami, Mr Stalin said the Chief Minister would have lost the trust vote. He also asked the people to join the protest being organised by the DMK on Wednesday to protest violence against party MLAs inside the Assembly.
“This is people's problem and they have to come out and protest. Students, government employees, trade union members and others should come and protest against the unfortunate incidents. What happened on Saturday was murder of democracy,” Mr Stalin said.
During the course of his televised address, the Opposition leader also commented on AIADMK general secretary V. K. Sasikala slamming on late Jayalalithaa's memorial saying the act was due to frustration that she could not become Chief Minister “even for a single day” despite all her efforts.
“She was frustrated that she lost out on becoming the Chief Minister and going to jail,” Mr Stalin said. Terming the current administration “benami government” of Ms Sasikala, Mr Stalin said, “nothing can be more shameful” that Mr Palanisami keeping photograph of Jayalalithaa who has been “convicted in a corruption case” on his table.
Queried about the steps being taken to bring Ms Sasikala to a jail here from the Bengaluru jail, the DMK leader said the party would explore legal options to oppose such moves. “M. Karunanidhi is being given speech therapy and is recovering,” Mr Stalin said, in reply to a specific query.
