Pon Radhakrishnan repeats remark on terrorists in Tamil Nadu'

Nagercoil/Chennai: Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan on Friday reiterated that Tamil Nadu has become a breeding ground for terrorists and though he has been warning of this for over a year now, the state government has done precious little to check these extremists. The Centre is only too willing to help if the state sought assistance to rein in the extremist elements, he told reporters at Nagercoil.

The state fisheries minister D.Jayakumar was once again the chosen gladiator to take on the BJP minister for his oft-repeated ‘terror/naxal’ charge. “He is a responsible Central Minister. If he really has any information on such extremism in Tamil Nadu, he must share it with our (state) government instead of speaking in public like a commoner”, said the AIADMK minister, looking pretty annoyed. On an earlier occasion too, Jayakumar had said Radhakrishnan “must not speak like a man on the street”.

Other AIADMK ministers too expressed anger at Radhakrishnan’s serious charge. “He is a senior leader and a Union Minister. He should be careful about his comments”, said handloom minister O.S. Manian. “In the entire country, only Tamil Nadu is peaceful. Ours is a state that upholds law and order, where there is no room for terrorism, extremism and separatism”, he told reporters at Tiruchy. 

Information minister Kadambur Raju said in Kovilpatti that Tamil Nadu was a haven of peace and “there has never been room for extremism in the state ever since Amma's days (in power).”

Interestingly, while Jayakumar has been the one challenging Radhakrishnan's 'terror/extremism' charge every time the Central minister came up with it — and now his two colleagues Manian and Raju too have joined him in it — both the CM and the Deputy CM have been mum on Ponnar.

On an earlier occasion, the BJP Minister had said, “I repeat, I have been saying this for long; why, even Chief Minister K. Palaniswami and a senior police official have said the same thing”. He was obviously referring to the CM's statement in the Assembly on June 4 regarding the anti-Sterlite agitation in Thoothukudi and the police firing during May 22-23.

The CM had then told the Assembly that the agitation that remained peaceful until then had turned violent on the 100th day. “Were they (agitators) general public? They were miscreants and anti-socials”, the CM had said while making clear no government would ever allow such bad elements to indulge in violence as that would lead to larger problems threatening public order.

In what perhaps was the most direct attack on CM Palaniswami on the 'extremism' plank, the BJP Minister had said on Wednesday (June 20) that it “is no use having a government which cannot control the obvious growth of extremists” as there were now “terrorists having training in the hills of Tamil Nadu and the state will soon turn into a battlefield” of these violent elements who have infiltrated in various mainstream areas, including the media.

“If the state government does not act firmly and swiftly, the people in Tamil Nadu will have to face a serious disaster. This government must serve its seven crore people; a government that cannot protect them is not needed”, said Radhakrishnan, speaking to reporters at the Chennai airport. “I am a Tamil too and I cannot see Tamil Nadu getting destroyed by these terror elements”. 

While this fierce battle between Radhakrishnan and the AIADMK regime could be intriguing in the context of the seemingly friendly ties between the BJP Government at the Centre and the EPS-OPS regime, a question remains why Radhakrishnan is not addressing the pointed challenge from Jayakumar and company - “if he has evidence of the terror/naxal presence in TN, why not produce it?” Of course, the NIA has been assigned the task of probing the slaying of Hindu Munnani leader Sasikumar in Coimbatore in 2016, which could be a reflection of the saffron mistrust of the state police.

TN's main opposition party, the DMK, is not impressed by Radhakrishnan's terror charges, seeing them as “just a ploy to divert public attention from the failure of the Modi Government on the economic front”.

“Having failed to deliver on the promise of dramatic economic development, made during the last Lok Sabha elections, the BJP is now creating a new poll plank for 2019. They (BJP) will fight the next polls saying there is serious terror threat and only they can save the country from disaster”, DMK spokesman TKS Elangovan, MP, told DC.