Centre 'proved its intolerance', says Jaya

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha termed the developments at Thursday’s National Development Council (NDC) meeting in Delhi where “my speech was cut short”, as proving the Centre’s “intolerance”.

“They are not prepared to listen to the views of Chief Ministers opposed to the Central Government,” the AIADMK leader said in a brief interaction with the media on arrival here from Delhi this evening.

Stating that she had raised important “people’s issues” pertaining to the State at the meeting like the pending ‘Digital Addressable System (DAS) licence’ to the State-owned Arasu Cable TV Corporation, and the need for notifying the Cauvery Tribunal’s final award, Jayalalitha said, “perhaps the Central Government wanted to avoid these issues
which resulted in this humiliating experience for me.”

The DMK patriarch and her arch-rival, M Karunanidhi, however, was not inclined to agree with her in totality. “If the Chief Minister had been humiliated at the NDC meeting, I also join in the condemnation,” he told reporters here. However, NDC meetings are “structured meetings”, the DMK leader said.