DMK ignoring PM’s assurances to hide its failures

CHENNAI: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman alleged that the DMK was raking up the issue of delimitation by ignoring Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance that the exercise will not result in injustice to any state since it wanted to hide its governance failure and deteriorating law and order situation in Tamil Nadu and gain political mileage ahead of 2026 Assembly election.

In an interaction with a group of journalists on Saturday, when the ruling DMK had hosted a meeting of leaders from six states to discuss the potential impact of the impending delimitation, Sitharaman said the meeting was also a manifestation of the contradictions and fissures within the INDIA bloc and the perception of other parties in the alliance that the Congress did not have capable leadership to lead the alliance.

On the DMK’s demand that the BJP should clarify that the delimitation would not be based on population, she contended that the Prime Minister and Home Minister Amit Shah have already offered broad assurance that there would be no unfairness and stressed that the method and other specific details about the exercise can be decided only by the Delimitation Commission, an autonomous Constitutional body, which will have to be constituted after the census. She said, just as with the Finance Commission, the political parties will have to make their case before the Delimitation Commission.