Karuna slams Jaya for demanding national status for Ram Sethu

Chennai: DMK president M Karunanidhi today slammed archrival AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa for demanding national monument status for Ram Sethu, saying her party had for long pitched for its implementation for the state’s development.

“We (DMK) are not against (Lord) Ram as is being made out. We are asking why do you oppose demolition of a non-existent bridge,” he said, referring to Ram Sethu or Adam’s Bridge.

He said DMK founder and Dravidian veteran, the late CN Annadurai, had pitched for the project in 1967 as then chief minister. “But Aryan forces are trying to demolish his dreams,” he said in a statement.

Slamming those opposed to the project, he likened them to the anti-nuclear agitators at Kudankulam, asking why they were protesting a long time after the project had begun.

The DMK leader, whose party MPs recently called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, calling for early implementation of the project, said people of the state should identify those who were playing spoilsport to the project under “fictitious reasons.”

He recalled that AIADMK in its election manifestos for 2001 Assembly polls and 2004 Lok Sabha polls pressed for implementing the project, but argued against it in the 2009 Parliamentary polls, citing feasibility issues and religious sentiments.

The DMK patriarch had courted controversy in the height of the Sethusamudram controversy with his comments against Lord Ram earning the wrath of pro-Hindu outfits. Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy had moved the Supreme Court against the demolition of Ram Sethu, while Jayalalithaa had written to Prime Minister Singh last week, insisting that the Centre declare it a national monument considering its “archaelogical, cultural and historical importance.”

On 27 March, the Apex Court had asked the Centre to make its stand clear on declaring the site a national monument.

PTI