Ramadoss refutes Karunanidhi’s claims over Eelam Tamils

PMK founder S Ramadoss has refuted Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s claims that he “lost” his governments on two occasions for the sake of Eelam Tamils. Reacting to Karunanidhi’s claims Ramadoss said that State politics, change of governments at the Centre and changes in political coalitions were the reasons for the dismissal of DMK’s state governments, and not the Eelam Tamil issue.

“In 1977, the DMK government was dismissed by the Congress government at Centre because of Karunanidhi’s opposition of the Emergency since 1975. The corruption charges presented by MGR were used to dismiss the government then. In 1977, the armed struggle had not even begun in Sri Lanka. The only development that year was the massive electoral victory for parties led by Amirthalingam in Sri Lanka. What was the contribution of Karunanidhi in the Eelam struggle at that point?”

On the second dismissal of the DMK government in January 1991, Ramadoss said: “The main issue during these elections was the Bofors scandal and V P Singh came to power in these elections. Karunanidhi had allied with VP Singh. But after V P Singh lost power and Chandrashekar became prime minister, Karunanidhi’s government was dismissed with the blessings of Rajiv Gandhi, because Karunanidhi was considered close to V P Singh. The failure of Karunanidhi’s government to control the LTTE was only one of the many reasons cited for the dismissal and was not the sole reason.”