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Central Ministers supporting LTTE must be dropped: Chidambaram

By Our Special Correspondent

SALEM July 13. Even while raising doubts over the need for invoking the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) to arrest the MDMK leader, Vaiko, the general secretary of the Congress Jananayaga Peravai (CJP), P. Chidambaram, has called for the removal of those Central Ministers who continue to proclaim their support to the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Mr. Chidambaram said that Mr. Vaiko's speeches backing the LTTE was condemnable, but whether it deserved the invocation of POTA was questionable. It had been the CJP's stand from the beginning that Act was a wrong law. However, when it came up in Parliament, the political parties such as the AIADMK, the DMK and the MDMK supported it.

At least now, he said, the MDMK would have realised its "folly" of having facilitated the passage of POTA. Armed with such a wrong law, the Tamil Nadu Government was emboldened to arrest an Opposition leader. There were other laws to deal with terrorism effectively.

Mr. Chidambaram said that by expressing solidarity with the LTTE, which stood convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the MDMK leader had hurt the sentiments of the Tamils here. If the MDMK Ministers in the Central Government continued to eulogise the LTTE, they should be dropped from the Cabinet.

About the move to ban the MDMK, Mr. Chidambaram said the State Government could only effect the arrest and the power to ban a political party rested with the Centre. Referring to the merger move of the Congress and the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC), he said the CJP had always welcomed it. As far as the CJP was concerned, it was striving for a third front comprising the Congress, the TMC, the CPI and the CPI(M). The TNCC president, E.V.K.S. Elangovan, too was working on it.

Asked whether the PMK would also form part of it, Mr. Chidambaram said the PMK was not a Dravidian party, and "it could not be said that the PMK would not have a place in the third front.'' When pointed out that the youth wing of the CJP had pasted posters elsewhere in Tamil Nadu stating film actor Rajnikant's support to the party, Mr. Chidambaram said, "we need the blessings of all.''

Referring to the Cauvery issue, he said there were only two options left: direct talks, or arrive at a solution through the Cauvery River Authority. But the Tamil Nadu Government had rejected both options and had gone to court. Whatever be the court verdict, it would be applicable only for the next year, but certainly the farmers would not benefit in the current kuruvai season.Mr. Chidambaram said that 21 political parties recently assembled in New Delhi to reject the Election Commission's move to make the prospective candidates to declare their antecedents. He maintained that it was contrary to the aspirations of the people. Moreover, the EC, too, had unnecessarily proposed an exhaustive 44-page nominations format.

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