Chennai: State handloom minister O.S.Manian has come up with a novel solution to eliminate corruption in the country—eliminate the bribe-givers. Seeking to play down BJP president Amit Shah’s damning indictment of Tamil Nadu as being “among the most corrupt states” in the country, Manian told reporters at Nagapattinam late Wednesday night that once the corruption-givers are totally eliminated, there would be no corruption anywhere.
“Both the givers and takers of bribe are punishable under the law. Once you eliminate those who give bribes, the bribe-takers will disappear. Corruption will vanish”, Manian said.
“Asking if there’s no corruption is like asking whether there is no breath, no air. India is a major democracy. We must think scientifically how to eliminate corruption”, said the handloom minister.
His colleague Sellur K. Raju came up with an equally interesting exposition on Shah’s corruption slam.
“People know very well who is corrupt. People are the bosses. They are the judges. And so, people will themselves decide this”, said the cooperation minister when reporters confronted him with the BJP chief’s charge, at Madurai on Thursday.
It may be recalled that senior AIADMK minister D. Jayakumar had blamed Shah’s allegation on poor translation by BJP national secretary H. Raja.
The BJP chief would have said good things about Tamil Nadu but Raja, the bad translator, had messed it all up, Jayakumar said.
Seeking to put an end to the AIADMK discomfort, state BJP president Dr Tamilisai Sounderarajan has said that Shah had been “misunderstood”. Her party chief had only said that there had been corruption in Tamil Nadu for several years and if BJP came to power, the party would eliminate corruption in governance.
“He did not say this party or that was corrupt. He also pointed out to the corrupt practices during the elections in Tamil Nadu”, Dr Tamilisai told reporters at Chennai on Thursday. She added that Tamil Nadu “is the only state where an election had to be deferred due to large-scale corruption”.
This one too was a response to the media person’s question on Shah’s embarrassing indictment of the Dravidian state. The Fourth Estate is obviously delighted at the juicy copy offered by the visiting BJP president.
