Parties have right to walk out: M. Karunanidhi

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Taking on chief minister J. Jayalalithaa for her criticism over his party’s boycott of the budget, DMK president M. Karunanidhi on Wednesday said all parties enjoyed the right to speak and walk out of the Assembly.

“I want to ask Jayalalithaa if the party had confined itself to the House protocol between 2006 and 2011 during the DMK regime?” he said in a statement.

The party had even boycotted the Governor’s address in 2006 when DMK formed the government, he said.

This was the case during the Governor’s address in 2007 and 2008 budget and even during the last budget presented by his government in 2011, he recalled.

He also slammed her criticism of Stalin saying it didn’t behove her office of chief minister.

On her charge that he had released the Justice Paul commission report much against House norms, he said he had done nothing wrong.

“As an Opposition leader in 1981, I released the report through the media since the then AIADMK government was ‘sitting over it’’ as it was not in its favour,” Karunanidhi said, adding that such a practice was common in Parliament. He was responding since she had targeted the party, he added.