New freebies just an extension: MK

CHENNAI: DMK leader M Karunanidhi has defended both the freebies given out by his recently dethroned government as well as the fiscal deficit it left behind. He also attacked Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for adopting double standards on the issue of freebies and came out openly against a number of schemes of the new government by calling them mere extensions of the schemes of the previous DMK regime. “When the DMK government implemented schemes distributing freebies, I was accused by the opposition parties and newspapers of spoiling the people and making them lazy. But now, the same people hail Jayalalithaa for giving 20 kg of rice free,” said Karunanidhi in a statement on the eve of his 88th birthday.  “We first gave a kg of rice for two rupees. Then we expanded the programme and gave a kilo of rice for one rupee. Now Jayalalithaa’s government is giving 20 kg of rice free of cost. It is just an extended version of the DMK’s schemes that the AIADMK has come forward to implement,” he said. Karunanidhi added that he had been advised by officials against giving 20 kg of free rice as it would be a bad move in the face of existing criticism from a number of quarters. “The AIADMK’s poll manifesto can simply be summed up as ‘one more than the DMK’,” he said. The former chief minister also defended the fiscal deficit of over a lakh crore rupees left behind by the government. He said his government had not funded the freebies through debt. “The money we got on loans were used only for infrastructure creation,” he said. He defended the debt on the basis that even developed nations in America and Europe used debt to finance their welfare measures. He also said Tamil Nadu had seen a fiscal surplus till 2008-09 and that expenditure outstripped revenue only due to tax cuts and increased salaries for government employees.He said State’s deficit was within the Centre’s prescribed levels. “The Centre’s limit on a State’s deficit is 25 per cent of the State Domestic Product, but Tamil Nadu’s deficit is only at 19.58 per cent,” he went on.