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Tamil Nadu
By Our Special Correspondent
As the DMK members rose in protest and the Treasury Benches vehemently chorused, ``corruption, corruption'', the Minister charged that the DMK's ``misdeeds'' were etched in Parliament records and the Sarkaria Commission report. Opening his reply to the debate on grants for his department with a vituperative attack, he said that while ``Puratchi Thalaivi Amma'' was acquitted of the slew of corruption charges, the DMK's record of ``misdeeds'' indelibly remained in the Parliament books. Giving reasons for the dismissal of the DMK regimes in 1976 and 1991, the Parliament records said it was for ``corruption'' and ``breakdown of law and order''. Instantly, the entire DMK group shouted in protest with its deputy leader, Durai Murugan, saying, ``the Centre will come up with various false charges for dismissing State Governments. When someone throws stones at a dog, he or she will claim it is mad''. When he said the Centre gave ``some excuse'' for dismissing the Namboodripad Government in Kerala too, J. Hemachandran (CPI (M)) said it was not sacked on grounds of corruption. As Mr. Sundaram continued to level charges, the unrelenting DMK members, particularly, K. Ponmudi, loudly demanded that the Minister read out the reasons for the dismissal of the MGR and Janaki Ramachandran Governments as well. Noisy scenes continued for a while prompting the Speaker, K. Kalimuthu, to say that the Minister was only reading out from the parliamentary records and it was not objectionable. The din died down finally when the Minister chose to make his announcements related to his department. Earlier, during the debate too, the House witnessed ruckus following a wrangle among the members of the DMK, the AIADMK, and the Congress. Reacting to the DMK MLA, M .P. Saminathan's statement that the free dhoti and saree scheme had been wound up, Gemini Ramachandran (AIADMK) alleged irregularities in it during the previous DMK regime. The DMK members were on their feet, vociferously demanding proof for his allegation. After a brief wordy duel, the Speaker expunged the charges. Later, the Congress member, Polur Varadan, came up with his predictable provocative charges against the DMK, this time against an individual close to the party president, M. Karunanidhi. After the DMK members raised a ruckus once again citing Assembly rules, the Speaker said he would decide whether the charges would go into Assembly records after examining the documents presented by Mr.Varadan. But the Ministers, R. Viswanathan and S. Karuppusamy, and the MLA, P. R.Sundaram, charged that during the erstwhile DMK regime allegations were made without any proof against Ms. Jayalalithaa in the House and the AIADMK members who raised objections were bundled out. To this, the Speaker said: ``it only shows how fair the present Jayalalithaa regime is''. As the AIADMK-DMK clash took up most part of the debate, the CPI (M) member, Nanmaran, who was asked to restrict his speech to two minutes by the Chair, angrily asked: ``You will give time for maaman-machaan discussions. But not for useful discussions'. Obviously, he was referring to the Food Minister, P. Dhanapal's dig at the relationship between Mr. Karunanidhi and his nephew and Union Minister, Murasoli Maran.
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