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Chennai, Nov 20 (IANS) Tamil Nadu BJP state spokesperson ANS Prasad on Thursday strongly criticized Chief Minister MK Stalin for alleging that the Central government has vindictively denied metro rail projects in Coimbatore and Madurai.
Prasad claimed that the Chief Minister was “spreading poisonous lies” instead of accepting that the state’s own faulty presentations had stalled the projects.
Prasad said it is “unfortunate and indecent” for a chief minister to accuse the Center of discrimination, when in fact, the central government is following the Metro Rail Policy, 2017, which applies uniformly across India.
“The chief minister is deliberately misleading people. The policy clearly states that metro projects will be considered only for cities whose population is more than 20 lakh as per the census data used in the DPR. No exception has been made for any state,” he said.
According to Prasad, every city that has received metro approval since 2017 — including Bhopal, Indore, Kanpur, Lucknow, Nagpur and Surat — met the eligibility criteria because their states submitted DPRs with correct urban agglomeration data and not with old municipal boundaries.
“Unlike these cities, the Tamil Nadu government repeatedly submitted DPRs for Coimbatore and Madurai using only 2011 municipal corporation data,” Prasad said.
The figures quoted – Coimbatore 16.01 lakh and Madurai 14.62 lakh – fell short of the mandatory limit, even though the actual urban agglomeration in both cities exceeds 20 lakh.
Calling it a “suicidal mistake”, Prasad questioned why the “so-called Dravidian model government” failed to fulfill a basic requirement which was fulfilled by the governments of BJP, Congress, BJD and BRS-ruled states.
He said, “This is not a small mistake. This is repeated incompetence being presented as a political victimization.”
Prasad urged the Chief Minister to correct the DPR instead of “fabricating falsehoods”. He demanded that the state government withdraw its “misleading statements” and direct officials to submit a revised DPR within 30 days using accurate aggregation data.
“The Center has made it clear that as soon as Tamil Nadu meets the transparent criteria that every state meets, Metro projects will be approved without any delay,” Prasad said.
–IANS
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