Madurai: Mounting a scathing attack on the ruling AIADMK in TN in the run-up to the May 16 Assembly polls, the senior BJP leader and Union minister Prakash Javadekar said it was “shocking” that sedition charges were being slapped on anti-liquour activists in the State for their democratic social awareness campaigns.
Speaking to reporters here on Friday, Mr Javadekar condemned the AIADMK government for filing sedition cases against anti-liquor protesters in the state. The minister said that it is the democratic rights of the people to protest against the social evils like liquor. “I am really shocked that the ruling government has charged the protesters with sedition charges,” he said.
Lashing out at the two major Dravidian parties DMK and AIADMK on their source of funding, senior BJP leader and Union minister Prakash Javadekar alleged that they were promoting “the sand and liquor mafias in Tamil Nadu as they receive funds from them for their political campaigns.” “These mafias fund the parties and also give election money,” charged Javadekar, who is the minister for Forests and Environment in the BJP government at the Centre.
The minister also alleged that the Dravidian parties “have liquor barons and sand mafia groups within their parties” and hence promoted their business interests. However, to prevent illegal sand mining, the Central government has introduced the sustainable sand mining policy.
Under this new policy all the rivers would be mapped through satellites to identify the sand deposits in each rivers. “Mining will be allowed in the river beds only after assessing the sand deposits,” he said. To implement it effectively, the Central Government was also taking steps to introduce compliance mechanism so that people could alert the government on illegal sand mining, he pointed out.
