AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami on Friday pledged to make Tamil Nadu a drug-free state if his party returns to power in the upcoming Assembly elections.
Addressing a campaign rally in Sangagiri, he said, “Students are increasingly falling prey to drug abuse and the time has come to put a stop to it. Once the AIADMK forms the government, the sale of ‘ganja’ will be completely eliminated, and Tamil Nadu will be transformed into a drug-free state.”
Alleging a sharp decline in law and order, Palaniswami claimed that women and the general public no longer feel safe under the current administration. “The situation has worsened to such an extent that even a two-year-old child is not spared, facing sexual violence and murder,” he said, adding that only a return of an AIADMK government could ensure women’s safety in the state.
He further alleged that even police personnel are not secure under the present regime. “In the past six months alone, six police personnel have been killed,” he said.
The AIADMK leader also claimed that incidents of murder, robbery and sexual assault occur almost daily, often linked to drug abuse. Criticising the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, he said that despite announcing 525 election promises, the party had failed to fulfill even a quarter of them.
Palaniswami highlighted that nearly 2,000 ‘Amma Mini Clinics’ had been established across the state during the AIADMK regime to provide accessible healthcare in rural areas. He alleged that Chief Minister M. K. Stalin had shut them down, and assured that they would be revived once his party returns to power.
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On the issue of the NEET examination, he accused the DMK government of failing to secure an exemption for Tamil Nadu. Referring to Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, he said earlier claims of a ‘secret strategy’ to abolish NEET were contradicted by the Chief Minister’s statement in the Assembly that, in light of the Supreme Court’s verdict, such an exemption was not feasible.
“This government came to power by spreading false promises,” he alleged. Calling the April 23 Assembly election a fight between the people of Tamil Nadu and ‘a single family that thrives by exploiting the state’, Palaniswami urged voters to reject those who, he claimed, were serving their own interests at the expense of the state’s eight crore residents.
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