Congress, DMK taking people for a ride over Statehood: AIADMK

Opposition AIADMK on Friday charged the Congress and its alliance partner the DMK here with taking people for a ride on the issue of statehood for Puducherry.

The leader of the legislature wing of the AIADMK A Anbalagan levelled this charge while talking to reporters on the sidelines of his campaign in the bypoll-bound Kamaraj Nagar constituency here.

During his campaign on Thursday, the DMK president M K Stalin had accused the Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi and the BJP of obstructing the efforts of the territorial Chief Minister V Narayanasamy to get statehood.

"This is absolutely a misleading and baseless allegation," Anbalagan said.

When the Congress was in power with the support of the DMK at the Centre why the Congress did not take any step to get statehood for Puducherry, the AIADMK leader said.

Both the Congress and the DMK had been taking the people for a ride on statehood issue by making false and baseless allegations against Bedi and the BJP on the matter, he said.

Former Chief Minister N Rangasamy also accused senior Congress leader and Chief Minister Narayanasamy of diverting people's attention without giving a straight reply to the opposition's question as to what he (Narayanasamy) had done during the last three years for development of the Union Territory.

He told newsmen that "when my government was in power in the past we could implement several schemes and we had the same powers as present government has now."