BJP to skip Tamil Nadu's all-party meet on delimitation

CHENNAI: The BJP State unit on Saturday announced that it would abstain from the March 5 all-party meeting convened to discuss the delimitation exercise which is reportedly threatening to reduce the representation of the state in the Lok Sabha.

Informing the decision in his letter addressed to CM Stalin, State BJP president K Annamalai said, “You have failed to inform people on the source of your information that the delimitation exercise would be carried out based on population. Since this is an imaginary and baseless fear you are spreading, we have decided not to participate in the all-party meeting convened on March 5.”

Annamalai also announced that the party would commence a signature campaign on the same day in support of the three-language policy for all students in the State as recommended in the National Education Policy.

Accusing the CM of ‘misconstruing’ the delimitation exercise and convening the all-party meeting to spread his ‘imaginary’ fears and deliberately peddling lies about delimitation exercise even before the means and methods through which it could be carried out were officially out, the State BJP president recalled Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s recent clarification on the issue and said that the announcement for delimitation would be made at an appropriate time by the Delimitation Commission. The saffron party leader added that it was disheartening to notice that the CM has still not learnt lessons from his debunked lies spread about the One Nation, One Election proposal.

Taking strong exception to the CM’s claim in the letter that delimitation would take the number of Lok Sabha seats to 848, Annamalai said, “We are not sure how you are privy to a confidential document indicating this actual number of 848 seats. We kindly request you to make the document public for the benefit of TN people.”