Blame Karunanidhi for power crisis

CHENNAI: Reacting to the call for flexibility from certain quarters in view of the acute power shortage faced by Tamil Nadu, convenor of anti-KKNPP protests, S P Udayakumar, on Sunday said that the policies adopted by former chief minister M Karunanidhi was to be blamed for the crisis and that people’s safety cannot be sacrificed for electricity. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a seminar, Udayakumar said that while the DMK regime gave licences to hundreds of industries, it failed to come up with adequate plans to meet the power demand. “Karunanidhi was chief minister for five years. He should have realised what the demand would be in the future and should have devised policies accordingly. Nothing of that sorts was done,” he said.The activist said that the poor, especially fishermen, cannot be made scapegoats for the mistakes that successive regimes had committed. “We cannot allow fishermen and their families to suffer the effects of a nuclear plant just because industries want electricity,” he said.On the committee formed by the State government to look into the Koodankulam issue, Udayakumar said members of the panel rigidly refused to meet the people of Idinthakarai. “They should have met the people and interacted with them. Instead, they visited the plant for two hours and have started giving certificates even before submitting the final report,” he said. Udayakumar said that he had already filed in the Madras High Court a defamation suit against the Prime Minister and minister for PMO V Narayanasamy for their “unsubstantiated” remarks about the financing of the protests. Coming down heavily on the Russian ambassador for his remarks on the Koodankulam protests, he wondered why the ambassador was speaking only about commissioning of the plant and not about issues such as liability. “If he says the plant is the safest in the world, why are several facts that we request kept hidden behind the curtain of inter-governmental agreements,” he said.On the alleged support given by leaders of the Communist parties to the plant, he said that they were still living under the impression that Russia was a communist State and were trying to continue the love affair with Soviet Russia.

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