Party leader Edappadi K Palaniswami said the AIADMK had always opposed the NEET exam while introducing AIADMK’s urban local body poll candidates for Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli, and Tenkasi districts to the cadre and voters on Monday.
The former chief minister also hit out at Chief Minister MK Stalin and said, “The DMK came to power by promising people a lot of things, but even after eight months, they have not implemented anything. The projects which Stalin is now inaugurating or laying foundation stones for were announced by the AIADMK government.”
Addressing party supporters during the election campaign, Palaniswami said, “NEET was introduced by a Congress-led government, of which the DMK was a part of. The AIADMK had opposed the move then. While in the government, we tried everything to bypass the nationalised test, but we had to obey the Supreme Court verdict on the matter. So, we initiated the 7.5 reservation for NEET-qualified State government school students. Though Stalin during campaigns for Assembly polls, had promised to sign papers to exempt the State from NEET right after forming government, he has not been able to do it yet. Our party stands resolute in our opposition towards the test, and would take further steps after studying the Supreme Court verdict.”
Sharpening his attack on Stalin, the Opposition leader claimed that the people were rejecting the Chief Minister’s claim to have fulfilled around 200 promises. “Despite knowing that the State government had a burden of several loans, the DMK lavishly issued promises. They promised to waive gold loans for nearly 48 lakh people, but in the end said only 13 lakh people were eligible. When the AIADMK government had distributed Rs 2,500 to people for Pongal, the DMK said `5,000 should have been provided. However, this year, their government provided no money to the people. Even the products in the gift hampers were of poor quality,” he claimed.
Palaniswami also assured voters that after winning the mayoral election, the AIADMK candidate will complete the Smart Cities Mission project of Tirunelveli Corporation, which has only been finished 35 per cent so far.
