Raja will not quit, says Karunanidhi

“I have not brought any good news for you,” Karunanidhi told journalists here, when he was asked to react to the opposition’s demand for resignation of Raja.

The Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Leftist parties created ruckus in both Houses of the Parliament last week protesting against alleged corruption in the Ministry of Communication and seeking Raja’s resignation over the multi-crore scam.

The DMK sources said that Karunanidhi was likely to convey to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi that the DMK was not ready to replace Raja with someone else from the party as the Telecom Minister or in any other berth in the Union Cabinet.

Karunanidhi flew to Delhi from Chennai on Sunday. He called on President Pratibha Patil and invited her to the ninth World Tamil Congress to be held in Coimbatore in June.
He did not reply to the journalists’ queries if the issue of opposition’s demand for resignation of Raja would figure in his talks with Singh and Gandhi.
Sources in the Congress however said that the party president and the Prime Minister might draw the DMK chief’s attention to the embarrassment the UPA government was experiencing due to his son and Union Minister for Chemical and Fertiliser M K Azhagiri’s continued absence from the Parliament.

The opposition BJP and other parties repeatedly attacked the government for the absence of Azhagiri in the Parliament. Karunanidhi, however, was evasive when the journalists asked him about Azhagiri. “You ask him,” he said. When the scribes pressed him for his comments; the DMK chief said, “Let him (Azhagiri) first give his opinion. Then I will give mine.”
DH News Service