Tiruchirappalli: Two days after Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami announced a slew of welfare measures, DMK working president MK Stalin on Wednesday said the state government would not be able to implement them in view of its mounting debts.
"They (Palaniswami regime) will not be able to involve themselves in efforts to implement the schemes," he said.
He wondered how the government would be able to deliver on such promises "when Tamil Nadu is reeling under a huge debt of Rs five lakh crore".
The DMK leader said Palaniswami's announcements were like that of his predecessors Panneerselvam and Jayalalithaa.
On February 20, two days after he took over, Palaniswami had announced several welfare measures, including grant of subsidy to one lakh working women every year for purchase of mopeds or scooters and closure of 500 more state-run TASMAC liquor outlets, taking the total number of such shops shut since last year to 1,000.
"Tamil Nadu has Rs five lakh crore debt... Now they say that they are going to give Scooty (50 per cent subsidy for women to buy scooters) I don't know how they will be able to give," Stalin said.
Referring to closure of 500 IMFL shops in 2016 after Jayalalithaa had assumed office, the DMK leader sought to know if government was ready to release a 'white paper' on the liquor outlets closed by the late Chief Minister.
He was winding up a day-long hunger strike by DMK here as part of state-wide protests over "murder of democracy" in the Assembly on February 18 when Chief Minister Palaniswami won a trust vote after eviction of DMK members.
The Leader of the Opposition said the stir was held with the single objective of ousting the 'proxy regime,' in an apparent reference to jailed AIADMK chief VK Sasikala, who had propped up Palaniswami as the CM nominee after her conviction by the Supreme Court in a graft case.
"Get ready to remove the proxy, atrocious regime. Let us prepare ourselves for it," Stalin, who led the DMK protest here, said. IUML leader K M Kader Mohideen was among those who participated in the fast.
Citing suspicions from some quarters over Jayalalithaa's death, Stalin said that the first announcement "after DMK comes to power" would be an order for a judicial inquiry into her death. "No one has locus standi to stop the inquiry," he said.
He pointed out that when Palaniswami took over as Chief Minister, his party chief Sasikala was in jail.
"If the state moves on under such circumstances, who will save Tamil Nadu and its people? Will this hunger strike be enough?... No," he said.
Stalin said he would head a DMK delegation to Delhi tomorrow to submit a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee, seeking a judicial inquiry (into the recent happenings in the Assembly)," he said.
He said his party had already filed a petition in the Madras High Court on the matter.
