CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Monday stepped on the populist gas, promising a monthly honorarium of Rs 1,500 to women heads of families and six domestic LPG cylinders per year free to every household in Tamil Nadu.
He accused DMK president M K Stalin of hijacking this promise from the yet-to-be-released AIADMK manifesto. Stalin, while unveiling the DMK’s vision statement in Trichy on Sunday, promised Rs 1,000 to the head woman of all families in the state.
MNM president Kamal Haasan, too, has charged Stalin with stealing the idea, which it claimed was its. Stalin retorted that the idea was borrowed from a European model.
EPS said the honorarium would bring income parity. “While our party’s manifesto was being prepared for the past ten days, information about such an announcement seems to have been leaked to Stalin, enabling him to hurriedly announce a payment of Rs 1,000 per month,” he told reporters at the party headquarters along with deputy chief minister O Panneerselvam.
