‘Schemes will speak for us in polls’

I commenced my campaign from Karumandhur village in Salem district on March 23. There is a great response wherever I go and people are happy in welcoming the candidates of AIADMK and its allies. This is proof to the fact that chances of our alliance’s victory are bright. 

We have formed a mega alliance for this elections. The AIADMK won 37 seats in the previous Lok Sabha elections and remaining two were won by BJP and PMK, who are allies in our present alliance.  Our MPs have performed well, especially in Cauvery water issue and the Parliament was stalled for 23 days by our party representatives and also by PMK leader, Anbumani Ramadoss. However, as far as the bypoll is considered, it is due to the conspiracy of a few persons, but we will win all the 18 constituencies. 

All the schemes, which were the brainchild of Jayalalithaa, were implemented successfully by the AIADMK government. All the promises made for the 2016 Assembly election have been fulfilled and people have no grudge against our government. Disbursal of Rs 1,000 during Pongal was a success and now I have commenced the scheme of distributing Rs 2,000 to labourers, but DMK had submitted a petition to Election Commission (EC) against the distribution. So, the scheme has been put on hold. After the election, we will continue to implement our promises. 

The government is running successfully with the wishes of the people. We have implemented several schemes for the welfare of the people especially in the rural areas, where more than 3,000 lakes were desilted to save rain water. The alluvial soil taken from the lakes were given back to farmers for cultivation. We have devised plans to construct several check dams to save excess water from going waste into the sea. After the completion of construction of check-dams the water position in the state will increase substantially. Recently, the government successfully brought in investments to the tune of Rs 3.04 lakh crore through 304 MoUs through the second edition of Global Investors Meet. This would boost the state’s economy and generate employment to around 10.5 lakh youngsters. 

The Congress and DMK are responsible for the implementation of the NEET. We have to implement NEET based on the directions of the Supreme Court. However, the state government had won several awards from the Central government for implementing several schemes successfully. Tamil Nadu is the forerunner in agriculture and the state agricultural department has received award on this front too. Similarly, the state leads in organ donation and for three years the state received awards from the Centre for this feat as well. In the previous DMK regime, from 2006 to 2011, there was severe power cuts. After Jayalalithaa came to power, Tamil Nadu became a power surplus state in just three years. Tamil Nadu is performing well in all the departments, but the opposition parties would always criticise the state, otherwise they would fail to be opposition parties.  

 I do not know on what basis are you asking this question. At the first instance, AMMK is not a party registered with the EC. AMMK is just an organisation. Dhinakaran is being highlighted only by the media and he is functioning with the sole aim of bringing down the AIADMK government. He was removed from the party by Jayalalithaa and was not a member of the party for 10 years. With such a track record, how Dhinakaran can claim ownership to the party. We are not worried about him. We are facing the election believing in the power of the people. 

As far as elections are considered alliances are not permanent. DMK which had criticised Congress in the past has now entered into an alliance with the same party. We have created an alliance aimed at winning all the 40 Lok Sabha seats and 18 Assembly seats.