Certain remarks made by Union Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday have not gone down well with the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu. Speaking at the inauguration of projects for Defence Corridor in Trichy, Nirmala said, "Minister (Vellamandi) Natarajan said that Puratchi Thalaivar MGR and Amma’s dreams of developing Trichy must be fulfilled. I would like to say something about that. From MGR’s period and Amma's period, after asking around a lot to the Central Governments, now it is only Modi who is fulfilling those dreams today." Sharply reacting to this, senior AIADMK leader KP Munusamy said that comparison between MGR, Jayalalithaa and Modi must be done on all aspects.
He added: "What dreams has Modi fulfilled? MGR and Amma’s dream was to create a society without inequalities. Has Modi done that? If you are comparing Modi with MGR and Jayalalithaa, it should be done in all aspects – industries, social welfare, equal rights for education." Earlier, in her address, Nirmala also said Modi government acknowledges the fact that the people of Tamil Nadu are enterprising businessmen. She said that the Defence Expo, which was never taken out of New Delhi except once in Goa, was brought to Tamil Nadu by Modi.
"The response from the local industry to this defence corridor has been amazing. They even wanted to extend this corridor up to Palakkad but we had to tell them that it would currently consist of these five nodes (cities) only", she said. The corridor will have six nodes around which investments are expected to grow. They include Hosur, Salem, Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli, Madurai and Chennai.
