Jayalalithaa declared that her government “is determined to put on hold the work on the power project till people's fears are allayed”. She said the Centre has done nothing to resolve the imbroglio.
The agitation against Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KNNP), which resumed on Tuesday after a two-day break, is all set to vitiate the Centre-state relations.
Agitators got a shot in the arm with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa issuing a strongly worded statement blaming the Union government’s inaction for the stalemate in the works related to the nuclear power plant.
She also declared that her government “is determined to put on hold the work on the power project till people's fears are allayed”. She said the Centre has done nothing to resolve the imbroglio.
No senior scientists could enter the Kudankulam plant premises on Tuesday since the district administration is tight lipped about the law and order situation. “We could not go to inside the Kudankulam nuclear plant premises because of this agitation. We are waiting for clearance from the district police,” said NK Balaji, project director.
He said a team of hundred technicians are attending to emergency works in the reactor. Balaji and his team of scientists and engineers did not move out of their houses since they did not get the green signal from the police.
Jayalalithaa charged that V Narayanaswamy, the minister of state in Prime Minister’s Office was trying to politicise the Kudankulam issue instead of helping in sorting out the agitation. The chief minister is already upset over the Centre’s inaction to her requests for funds to set up solar power plants to address the severe power shortage in the state as well as the attacks on the Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy. Immediately after assuming office, Jayalalithaa had called on Manmohan Singh with the request for a special financial package to the state for which she has not received any response.
She charged that though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has claimed through the media that he has written to her on the KNPP issue, she was yet to get any letter from him. “As a third time chief minister this is a new experience to me. Though the prime minister claims he has written to me, I am yet to get the letter,” she said.
The People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) which spearheads the agitation had given a day’s break to the thousands of activists sitting in protest against the KNPP at the project site on Monday so that they could cast their votes in the crucial elections to the local bodies. “We reassembled early Tuesday morning and resumed our agitation. We will not stop our agitation till the plant is shut down once and for all,” Pushparayan, deputy to PMANE convener SP Udayakumar told DNA.
He said the activists have come back rejuvenated by the feedback they got from their villages. “This is the beginning of the end of all proposed nuclear power plants in the country. We are also upset that the top nuclear scientists go around the country claiming that we do not have any knowledge about nuclear reactors,” he said.
More than 1,300 agitators are sitting in protest at Kudankulam. Earlier in the day, DMK president M Karunanidhi pitched in with his share of criticism by alleging that Jayalalithaa was playing a double game with respect to the Koodankulam plant. He expressed his willingness to help the Prime Minister in resolving the KNPP stalemate.
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