Jayalalithaa promises to light up TN from June

TIRUNELVELI: Hitting the by-election campaign trail in Sankarankoil Assembly constituency on Wednesday, AIADMK general secretary and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa promised to ‘light up’ Tamil Nadu by gradually reducing power cuts from June this year. Blaming the erstwhile DMK regime for poor handling of the power crisis, Jayalalithaa who landed at a helipad in Thiruvenkadam in the evening, explained the steps taken by her Government to take Tamil Nadu out of darkness. “New power projects including the extension of Stage I of the North Chennai power plant Vallur and Mettur are on track. Their completion will help ease the crisis,” she told the electorate. According to her, 1,950 mw of electricity would be generated through fast track completion of some of the ongoing projects by June and another 600 mw power would be generated by October. “I assure you that from June the power cuts will be reduced gradually,” the Chief Minister said pointing out that congestion in the power grid was affecting Tamil Nadu’s capacity to draw power from other north Indian States. She also drew the attention of the people to the fact that her Government had revived the 1,600 mw Udangudi super critical thermal power project in Tirunelveli district as a State project. Jayalalithaa also used the occasion to target the Congress-led UPA Government for its failure to speak up for the Tamils of Sri Lanka. “There are reports that the Indian Government would oppose the US-sponsored resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council seeking to prosecute Sri Lanka for war crimes. This is what the Congress has done for the Tamils. Whereas the AIADMK Government always had the welfare of the people of Tamil Nadu and the Tamils in mind,” she declared. The Chief Minister recalled that although her Government had passed a resolution in the Legislative Assembly urging the Central Government to impose economic sanctions against Sri Lanka, the latter did not act on it. Jayalalithaa urged the electorate in Sankarankoil to vote overwhelmingly in favour of the AIADMK candidate S Muthuselvi to teach the Congress, DMK and others a lesson. An appeal in Telugu The predominantly Telugu-speaking voters of Thiruvengadam, a town in Sankarankoil constituency, got to see the polyglot in AIADMK leader and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Wednesday. The Chief Minister, who launched her by-election campaign from Thiruvengadam broke into fluent Telugu for a couple of minutes and called upon the voters to elect her party candidate. She drew loud cheers along her speech.  During her campaign, a former AIADMK MLA Dharmalingam, who had defected to the DMDK, rejoined the party. She also completed her campaign on day one in style at Thevarkulam where she was welcomed by five elephants.