Chennai, Oct. 18: Jayalalithaa today accused the Prime Minister’s Office of impropriety, claiming it had released to the media two letters on the Kudankulam nuclear plant protest before sending them to her.
“I’ve been a chief minister thrice and have communicated with several Prime Ministers in the past. But never have I witnessed a situation whereby a Prime Minister says he has written to me but has instead released the letter to the media, but not to me. But I have had this new experience twice in the last 10 days,” she said derisively.
The Tamil Nadu chief minister pointed out that while her office had to ask the PMO for the first letter addressed to her by Manmohan Singh on October 4 and released to the media on October 7, the second letter that was released on October 12 to the media was yet to reach her office.
Jayalalithaa was also angry about some remarks by V. Narayanasamy, minister of state in the PMO, who attributed the delay in starting negotiations with the Kudankulam protesters to the state government’s failure to name its representatives on the experts panel to be formed by the Centre.
The chief minister said her government had not received any communiqué to name its representatives. “This only strengthens my suspicion whether the Centre is acting deliberately on the Kudankulam issue to pin the blame on the state, even after my government has insisted that all work should stop at the nuclear plant till the local people are reassured by the Centre. The Centre must instead initiate steps to defuse the situation at Kudankulam where the protesters have resumed their protest fast,” she said in statement.
Jayalalithaa’s anger fits in with her approach of siding with the protesters at Kudankulam, who are against allowing a nuclear power plant there because they fear a nuclear hazard.
On the other hand, Tamil Nadu faces a crippling power crisis and needs every unit of the 950MW that will be generated at the nuclear plant.
Jayalalithaa had initially said that experts had deemed the proposed nuclear project safe but changed her stand later by asking the Prime Minister to deal with the matter.
Earlier this month, Singh met an all-party delegation from Tamil Nadu and public representatives from the Kudankulam coastal site in response to a request by Jayalalithaa. Singh told the delegation that the government attached the highest importance to ensuring that the use of nuclear energy follows the highest safety standards.
The chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Srikumar Banerjee, has indicated that the nuclear plant would be commissioned by November-end, notwithstanding the protests and blockade of the roads to the site.
Kudankulam is not the only issue in which Jayalalithaa has done an about-turn of sorts.
On the death sentence to the three assassins of Rajiv Gandhi, too, she first pleaded helplessness, then had the Assembly pass a resolution seeking clemency for them. “Even if noises are being made by only small vocal groups, which do not reflect the majority view, Jayalalithaa does not want to take any step that may be perceived as unpopular,” pointed out Thuglak editor Cho Ramaswamy.
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