Jaya alleges external pressure for postponing tax avoidance rules

Promises petrol prices will remain the same throughout the year, if AIADMK becomes part of Centre

Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa today alleged external pressure over the Centre’s decision to postpone the implementation of tax avoidance measures to next year.

Addressing a public rally at the AM Jain College ground in support of K N Ramachandran, her party’s candidate for the Sriperumbudur constituency, she referred to the foreign investment routed into India through Mauritius.

“The central government had postponed the implementation of tax avoidance measures to 2015 owing to foreign pressures,” said Jayalalithaa, who added the Centre’s wrong economic policies had hit the country’s economy and in turn burdened the common man.

She quoted the power given to oil marketing companies to fix petrol prices as one of the examples.

Jayalalithaa said when the new government comes into place at the Centre, in which AIADMK would be part, the oil pricing policy would be changed and the power given to these companies would be withdrawn. “Petrol prices will remain the same throughout the year,” she said.

She described price rise, devaluation of rupee, unemployment and stagnation in agriculture production as the ills of the current government.

She came down heavily on the Congress led-UPA government stating that “the Congress government has made the country’s defence forces defenceless.”

“For the past 60 years, the heads of defence forces have been writing to the Prime Ministers to take steps for modernising them. However, no Prime Minister found time to reply to those letters,” she said and blamed the Centre for the recent mishaps in the Navy.

“While the Indian Navy doesn’'t have sufficient submarines, ships, the airforce lacks fighter aircraft and the army is short of equipment and personnel.”

“It is not an ordinary election that would result in the change of government. It is an election that would secure Indians freedom from corrupt rule, threat from neighbouring nations and other ills,” she said.

According to her, the new government in New Delhi should be people’s government, Tamil Nadu people’s government and the AIADMK party’s government.