Chennai, Nov 20 (IANS) Tamil Nadu BJP state spokesperson A.N.S. Prasad on Thursday strongly criticised Chief Minister M.K. Stalin for alleging that the Union Government had denied Metro rail projects to Coimbatore and Madurai out of “vindictive revenge”.
Prasad claimed the Chief Minister was “peddling venomous lies” instead of admitting that the state’s own faulty submissions stalled the projects.
Prasad said it was “unfortunate and unbecoming” of a Chief Minister to accuse the Centre of discrimination when, in fact, the Union Government was following the Metro Rail Policy, 2017, which applies uniformly across India.
“The Chief Minister is deliberately misleading the people. The policy clearly states that Metro projects will be considered only for cities whose population exceeds 20 lakh as per the Census data used in the DPR. No exception has been made for any state,” he asserted.
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Surat — met the eligibility criteria because their states submitted DPRs with correct urban agglomeration figures, not outdated municipal limits.
“Unlike these cities, the Tamil Nadu government repeatedly submitted DPRs for Coimbatore and Madurai using only the 2011 Municipal Corporation figures,” Prasad said.
The figures quoted — Coimbatore at 16.01 lakh and Madurai at 14.62 lakh — fell short of the mandatory threshold, even though the actual urban agglomerations in both cities exceed 20 lakh.
Calling this a “self-sabotaging blunder”, Prasad questioned why the “so-called Dravidian Model government” failed to meet a basic requirement that governments across BJP, Congress, BJD, and BRS-ruled states had complied with.
“This isn’t a small mistake. It’s repeated inefficiency being passed off as political victimhood,” he said.
Prasad urged the Chief Minister to correct the DPRs instead of “manufacturing false narratives”. He demanded that the state government withdraw its “misleading statements” and direct officials to submit revised DPRs within 30 days using accurate agglomeration data.
“The Centre has made it clear that the moment Tamil Nadu meets the transparent criteria that every other state has met, the Metro projects will be approved without delay,” Prasad said, adding that people deserve a government that fights with “facts and files, not fiction and falsehoods.”
–IANS
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