Tamilisai attacks DMK chief on media ban talk

BJP’s state unit president Tamilisai Soundararajan slammed Karunanidhi for saying that the one-day ban amounted to violation of freedom of expression, referring to the infamous Dinakaran newspaper office burning incident in Madurai in 2007 when he was the Chief Minister. 

“Why Kalaignar (Karunanidhi), who talks of a second Emergency in the context of the ban on a TV channel, has forgotten the memories of Emergency while aligning with the Congress,” she said in a Twitter post in Tamil. She was apparently referring to the arrest of many DMK leaders, including its Treasurer and former Deputy Chief Minister MK Stalin, under the stringent Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) during Emergency, who were also allegedly assaulted inside prison. 

DMK had aligned with Congress-led UPA in 2004, before walking out of the coalition in 2013 on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue, even as the two parties patched up and joined hands for the May 2016 Assembly polls. In another tweet, she took pot-shots at Karunanidhi on the Dinakaran office attack which had left three persons dead, besides the one on another Tamil daily during the DMK regime. 

She questioned him why this freedom of expression did not “come to your mind when Dinakaran (office) was burnt”. In the context of freedom of expression, she insisted that the country’s security was paramount. On Saturday, Karunanidhi described as “violation of freedom of expression” the oneday ban on NDTV India over the Pathankot attack broadcast and said that if such instances continue “it will lead to a second Emergency in the country.”