I’m witness to abuse meted out to my leader in 1989, says EPS

MADURAI: Lashing out at Chief Minister MK Stalin for trying to downplay Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s recent statement in the Lok Sabha on the assault on the late AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa, the Leader of Opposition and party general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami asserted that Jayalalithaa did suffer brutal abuse at the hands of some DMK MLAs inside the state Assembly.

March 25, 1989 was a black day in the history of the AIADMK, he told reporters at Madurai airport on Sunday. As an MLA from Edappadi constituency, Palaniswami said he witnessed the brutality that happened during that Assembly session. Such dastardly acts committed by those DMK MLAs apparently took place in front of the former chief minister M Karunanidhi.

“As someone who saw it I am saying this- in that House, in the presence of then CM Karunanidhi, despite being LoP, a woman, a brutal attack was launched on her,” he stated. When former MLAs S Thirunavukkarasar and KKSSR Ramachandran tried to safeguard Jayalalithaa from such attacks, a DMK MLA, who’s currently a senior Minister, pulled Jayalalithaa’s saree and some other MLAs even pulled her hair, he recalled. After such a horrible experience in the Assembly session, Jayalalithaa vowed that she would become Chief Minister and only after achieving a massive victory in the Assembly election in 1991, she re-entered the House.

“I can still recall. I was in the House. Such events were unprecedented in the history of the House, a very bad day in the history of the Assembly. No women member or LoP had faced such a situation. But, today CM (Stalin) is demeaning that. Everything had been reported in the press and media,” Palaniswami added.

Further, EPS said nothing happened to fulfill the promise made by CM Stalin ahead of 2021 polls to abolish NEET. EPS wondered how the DMK-led government could implement a sudden abolition of NEET while the Supreme Court ordered NEET implementation in all states. Citing these, he said Stalin simply lied to the people and his party came to power.