Saturday 14 January 2012

Moral Irresponsibility

Despite the disastrous defeat and humiliation at Pennagaram pushing the ADMK to the disgraceful third place while also forfeiting the deposit of her party candidate, the two time Chief Minister Jayalalitha has not learnt lessons and refuses to catch on the message.
She had started replaying her treacherous game of issuing statements, knowingly furnishing false statistics to put the government, at least temporarily, in the defensive situation. Even a few days ago she accused the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board alleging that it was incurring huge losses because of the import of low calorific value coal from Indonesia at a higher cost. She painted a devastating picture that TNEB had totally imported, between 2005-06 and 2009-10,680.43 lakh tonnes of coal through Tuticorin and Ennore ports thereby incurring huge loss of more than Rs.One thousand crore, in rupee terms at Rs.1,575 per tonne. She indicted that TNEB was shelling out abnormally excess amounts every year by importing coal at a higher price resulting in heavy losses.
 

She also attributed motive alleging that the purchase order was given to Star Emmens Resources, a sister concern of ETA-Star Group. To this completely ridiculous and outrageous statement of Jayalalitha, the Chief Minister Kalaignar with all the sincerity and openness at his command replied, denying the charges point by point.
 

As regards her allegation that 680.43 lakh tonnes of coal had been imported at a higher cost the Chief Minister rebutted the charge with statistics and proved that the government had imported only 83 lakh tonnes of coal between 2005 and 2010. The Chief Minister also denied that coal was imported at a cost of 120 US dolllars per tonne while coal of similar gross calorific value was available at 77 US dollars. However, the average cost of coal was between 90 and 95 US dollars, the CM said. He also categorically denied her preposterous charge that the purchase order was given to a private firm, Star Emmsons Resources asserting that TNEB was importing coal only through Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation, a public sector undertaking to avoid criticism from persons like Jayalalitha. Anyway Star Emmsons Resources are in no way connected with the builders of the New Secretariat complex as alleged by Jayalalitha as the tender for the new secretariat complex were given only after an International bid. The calorific value of coal was prescribed by the Centre and the State has nothing to do with that.
 

Talking to media persons in Neyveli, the Union Minister for Coal Thiru Sriprakash Jaiswal endorsed the TN Chief Minister’s statement acknowledging that the figures quoted by him in respect of coal import was correct. This means the contents of Jayalalitha’s calculated venomous statement are false and frivolous. Thus it is clear that TNEB did not incur any loss. The information provided to her from ‘reliable sources’ on April 1st appears to be an April Fool tamasha, as the Chief Minister pointed out in his epistle in ‘Murasoli’.
 

The extant procedure followed by the State government in the purchase of coal for TNEB is that 70% of the coal requirements of the State will be met by Coal India while the State government will make its own arrangements to import the remaining 30%. In the present case, Coal India met 130 lakh tonnes of coal to the TNEB out of its total requirements of 150 tonnes. Remaining 20 lakh tonnes alone were imported. Jayalalitha a two time Chief Minister should have been conversant with this procedure. She ought to have been abundantly cautious to verify the facts before issuing sensitive statements aimed to criticize and condemn the State government.
People are responsible for the results of what they do. Abuse of right and liberty may be dangerous. Jayalalitha very often crosses the limits of political decency. As the Chief Minister said in the Assembly, the duty of the political opposition is to monitor the performance of the ruling party and the government; the ruling party cannot expect bouquets always from the opposition. But there is a decent limit for the ruling party’s tolerance. The writing of individuals should not be based on canard. The style of functioning of the members criticizing the government’s performance need not be rough and rude. According to a judge of a US court, such callous attitude of persons like Jayalalitha issuing frivolous statements can only be categorized as moral irresponsibility.



(11-04-10

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