Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin accused the Union BJP Government of indulging in large scale corruption to the tune of Rs 7.5 lakh crore, as pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in his report, and said that the people of the country had realized that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was against the poor, ordinary, Backward Class, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe people of the country.
In the second episode of his ‘Speaking for India’ podcast on Saturday, Stalin said the CAG had exposed a wide range of corruption and violations of norms in most of the Union Government’s schemes and the regime today stood for 5 ‘C’s – Communalism, Corruption, Corporate Capitalism, Cheating and Character Assassination.
Recalling the Modi’s statement before coming to power in 2014 ‘the Congress ruled India for 60 years, give me 60 months and I shall make it a developed country and that he needed only 5 ‘T’s – Talent, Trading, Tradition, Tourism and Technology – Stalin said that nothing has happened even though he had been given two times the 60 months that he asked for.
While the Union Government managed to cover up its pitfalls in a glare of publicity so long, the formation of INDIA alliance had led to his mask being torn apart by various political parties and different levels, he said, adding that, he, however, was only referring to the CAG report that had found irregularities in almost every scheme.
Among the schemes that he referred to were the Ayodhya Scheme covering the six States of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Goa and Telangana to promote places connected with the Ramayana and the Udhan Scheme.
Started in 2016, the Udhan Scheme envisaged setting up airports in middle level towns and opening 774 air routes to enable the poor to undertake air travel but 720 routes had not become operational till now, he said.
Of the towns that were promised airports in Tamil Nadu, only Salem saw one opening and also closing down. The airports did not come up in Thanjavur, Ramanathapuram and Vellore, the Chief Minister said.
Apart from the losses incurred by the Railways and the diversion of pension funds to finance the advertisements of the government, there had been large-scale corruption in the running of toll plazas, he said.
Motorists were fleeced at the toll plazas, which came to light from the audit conducted at five toll plazas, which revealed that Rs 132.05 crore had been overcharged by NHAI, he said. An audit of all the toll plazas would bring out the enormity of the corruption, he said.
Other schemes in which corruption and irregularities had been pointed out by the CAG are the Bharatmala, Dwarka Expressway and Bharatmala Pariyojana schemes. The cost of road laying was raised from Rs 15.37 crore to Rs 32.17 crore for a kilometer and only 40 per cent of the promised roads had been laid in 8 years, he said.
In the Ayushman Bharat Scheme, purportedly providing Rs 5 lakh health cover to the poor, the CAG had found a slew of irregularities like dead persons getting claims, same person admitted in several hospitals, several registrations with one Aadhar card number and several persons registering with the same telephone number, he said.
Pointing out that none of the Union Ministers had bothered to reply to the charges made in the CAG report, Stalin said the government was playing different political games to divert the people’s attention from the real issues and called for saving India by supporting INDIA.
