Salem: Chief Minister K. Palaniswami on Friday asserted that the government was functioning "very efficiently" and slammed the opposition for levelling 'baseless' charges "purely for political reasons and out of vendetta".

"They are making all sorts of allegations only due to political reasons and out of vendetta. Amma's government has been functioning very efficiently and all the welfare schemes initiated by Amma are being implemented expeditiously", he told reporters here.





He was responding to a question about the opposition parties repeatedly accusing the government of high corruption and also of being subservient to the BJP. DMK chief M K Stalin had said even on August 28 in his address after taking over as the party president that the government was 'spineless' and deserved to be thrown out. In fact, the DMK has been repeatedly attacking the government of being subservient to the Centre after Jayalalithaa's death and compromising the state's rights.

The Chief Minister claimed that the state had been recording consistent growth in all the sectors and justifiably receiving honours such as the Krishi Karman award from the Centre for record food grain production.

On simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies, he said the AIADMK had already conveyed its stand that the present Tamil Nadu assembly's term ended in 2021 and people's mandate should not be disrupted.

"I feel that a consensus has not been reached on holding simultaneous elections," he said, and added that in any case, the AIADMK was "ready to face elections whenever held".

To a question on the demand for reverting to the ballot paper in polls, the CM said the AIADMK did not see any "wrongs," in the functioning of electronic voting machines.

"As far as we are concerned we have no doubts (on the functioning of EVMs). We are ready to accept any mode, be it ballot boxes or EVMs." The AIADMK trusted the people -"the masters in a democracy"- to deliver justice at the hustings irrespective of the mode of voting, he said.

On the Mullaperiyar dam issue, Palaniswami reiterated that Kerala government was "deliberately spreading wrong information" that release of water from the dam by TN was one of the reasons for the recent deluge in that state. Tamil Nadu was taking steps to strengthen the dam so that water storage could be scaled up to 152 ft in tune with the Supreme Court order of 2014, he said.