Date:05/06/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/06/05/stories/2007060506000400.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

"DMK will strive for secular regimes"

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president and Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi on Sunday said his party would strive further for ensuring that only secular Governments come to power in the country both at the Centre and the States.

Addressing a public meeting held here to mark his 84th birthday, he said that it was the DMK, which laid the foundation at a critical time for bringing back a secular Government at the Centre. Now it had to be ensured that only secular Governments were installed in every State. The DMK should go down in history as stabilising this process, he said. Even the opposition to the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project (SSCP) on the ground of protecting Ramsetu was a ploy by the communal forces to bring back non-secular politics into the mainstream, he said.

This dangerous trend should be defeated, he said, adding that if the project was implemented, it would bring more prosperity and trade to the South and if abandoned, it would again push back the region by 50 years.

Mr. Karunanidhi said that while these issues were important, his birthday message was that Tamil should become one of the official languages at the Centre and concerted efforts should be made to interlink all the rivers in the country.

Even if the Ganga-Cauvery link could not be taken up immediately, an earnest beginning should be made by inter-linking the peninsular rivers, he said.

Efforts must be made to first get all irrigation Ministers of the southern States to discuss this plan followed by a meeting of southern Chief Ministers, he said.

The process must culminate in the signing of an agreement in the presence of the Prime Minister on interlinking the peninsular rivers. This would go a long way to strengthen the nation's unity and multiply the benefits for various States, he said.