Centre dragging its feet on Koodankulam: Jaya

CHENNAI: Exposing the Centre’s lethargic attitude towar­ds resolving the ongoing agitation against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP), Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Tuesday charged the Central Government with trying to shift the blame on the Tamil Nadu government.Categorically stating that further works on KKNPP should be suspended until the fears of the local people were allayed regarding the aspects of safety of the atomic plant, the Chief Minister said that the people of Koodankulam were forced to intensify their agitation as the Centre had failed to suspend the works.Right from the beginning, the Centre had failed in allaying the fears of the local people despite the fact that KKNPP is a Central government project and the Centre was duty-bound to do so, the CM said, adding that she was left with no choice but to write to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on September 19, as the Centre continued to keep aloof from the issue.The CM expressed her resentment over the way in which the Prime Minister’s Office conducted itself in not sending the PM’s two letters to her written on October 4 and 12. The Tamil Nadu government had to get the copy of the letter dated October 4 from the PMO only after making a request on October 9. The second letter dated October 7 is yet to be received by the State government.“This is my third tenure as the CM and I have written many letters to successive Prime Ministers. But never has a PM released the copy of the letter written to me to the media and failed to send the same to me. But I faced this strange experience twice within the past 10 days,” Jayalalithaa said. Asking the Centre to take immediate steps to resolve the issue at once, Jayalalitha­a pointed out that Union Minister V Narayanasamy was trying to make the State Government a scapegoat with his comments that the experts committee—which is to hold talks with the people of Koodankulam—could not be constituted as promised by the PM only because the Tamil Nadu government had failed to send its list of representatives to the panel.