CM, Edappadi K Palaniswami Cross Swords in House

 Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin and the Leader of the opposition Edappadi K Palaniswami crossed swords in the Assembly on Thursday over the Speaker’s refusal to immediately allow a call attention motion on the problems relating to poultry farmers and then when the AIADMK member K Thangamani accused the government of failing to fulfill the promises made to the people during the election.

With the Speaker insisting that the debate on poultry farmers’ problems could be held after the officials gave a clear picture on the issue with the Chief Minister also supporting it, AIADMK members walked out of the House. Palaniswami later told the media that 40,000 farmers were involved in the business employing five lakh workers.

Palaniswami said that the government was by the side of the poultry owners and not the workers and regretted that not even two minutes were allocated during zero hour for discussing the problem. The protest was going on for six month and the government could have given its reply with just two more days left for the present Assembly session, he said.

During the debate on the motion of thanks to the Governor’s address, Stalin listed out the measures taken by the government for the welfare of the State government employees when Thangamani regretted that the government had not addressed the problems of the employees who were aggrieved. Palaniswami said that their main demand for the restoration of the old pension scheme had not been acceded to.

Stalin replied that the DMK government had solved the problem that had been raging for 23 years and also that no draconian laws like ESMA or TESMA were invoked against the protesting employees. The employees were not subjected to midnight arrests as it was done during the AIADMK rule when the Chief Minister even belittled the government staff by denigrating the way they were receiving salaries, he said.

He said that the union leaders distributed sweets on the day the government found a solution to their problems, to which the opposition leaders said that it was done only by the unions favouring the government. Stalin agreed that not all grievances of government employees had been addressed and that that the Government had to cover one or two more percent of the total issues.

The Chief Minister agreed that several small agitations by sections of employees were still on but assured that the government would not turn a blind eye to their problems. Several rounds of talks had been held by Ministers and others and assured that their demands would be looked into and a final solution arrived soon.