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By R.K. Radhakrishnan
The DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, after announcing the withdrawal of the Union Ministers, T.R. Baalu and A. Raja, from the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre. The decision was taken at a high-level policy-making committee meeting in Chennai on Saturday.
The party's Union Ministers, T.R. Baalu (Environment Minister) and A. Raja (Minister of State for Health), will be submitting their resignations. The 11 DMK members in the Lok Sabha will sit with the parties supporting the NDA from outside. The DMK move does not pose a direct threat to the stability of the ruling NDA. "As long as the NDA implements the National Agenda for Governance in letter and in spirit, we will support the NDA," the DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, announced at a press conference at party headquarters here after a meeting of the party's high-level policy committee. "We will oppose anything that goes against our principles," he said.
Talking ill of DMK
Asked if the NDA Government had gone against the agreed agenda of governance, he said the issue now was not whether there was any such deviation. The issue was that the BJP leaders were talking ill of the DMK here. "The main reason [for the decision] is the Tamil Nadu [unit of] the BJP. We did not want to see some shift in policy at the national level too (taking the line of the State unit)," he said. On December 15, the DMK had threatened to walk out of the NDA, attributing "ulterior motives" to the comments made the day before, by the BJP president, N.Venkaiah Naidu. Mr. Naidu had said that "being in the [Central] Government and going on an agitation" was "not an ideal situation" for coalition partners to be in. But, he had predicted that a "one-day agitation will not make much difference" to BJP-DMK relations. Mr. Naidu was commenting on the DMK's Statewide agitation against the State and Central Governments' ``anti-people'' measures, including the Prevention of Terrorism Act [enacted by the Union Government] and the Tamil Nadu Essential Services Maintenance Act and the Essential Services Maintenance Act. This morning the high-level policy committee — virtually comprising all the important DMK leaders — discussed every facet of the decision. The fact that the BJP had won the recent Assembly elections in three States also came up for deliberations, sources said. After considering all this, the committee recommended to the DMK leadership that the party should withdraw its Ministers from the Union Ministry and give outside support. Mr. Karunanidhi said the recommendations of the committee were accepted by the top leadership. The committee's resolution formed a virtual charge-sheet against the BJP — it recalled the reasons for the DMK, the BJP, the PMK and the MDMK coming together in 1999 and said that after the AIADMK came to power in the State in 2001, the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, began to get support from the BJP both "covertly and overtly." It recollected the anti-DMK pronouncements of various BJP State leaders and national leaders. Besides, some DMK demands including the withdrawal of POTA, a lasting solution to the Cauvery tangle and acceptance of Tamil as an official language did not evoke the expected response from the Union Government, the resolution said.
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