By IANS,
Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) : Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary A.B. Bardhan Wednesday said the “mafia” centred in the temple town of Madurai is undermining Indian democracy by bribing voters.
Referring to the seizure of cash by the Election Commission (EC) supposedly meant for bribing the voters, Bardhan said: “They (DMK and Congress) are using several crores to bribe the voters. It is mainly the mafia centred around Madurai which is responsible for this.”
He was speaking at the first all-party election rally led by the AIADMK front held in Coimbatore, around 500 km from Chennai.
Referring to the Rs.64 crore scam in the procurement of Bofors gun a couple of decades back, he said there was a time when the Congress government was thrown out of power due to the Bofors scam.
“But today corruption under the UPA (United Progressive Alliance)-DMK combine scams run into several lakh crores,” Bardhan said.
He said the Congress was not interested in bringing back the money stashed away in Swiss banks as it belonged to its own leaders and the members of the DMK.
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary Prakash Karat said the Tamil Nadu assembly elections are important not only for the people of the state but also for the Indian people.
He said the DMK has brought shame to the state by engineering the Rs.1.76 lakh crore 2G spectrum scam.