16th April 2014

Courtesy: The New Indian Express

Licence Fee Hike Is Cracker Of a Poll Issue

All the candidates belonging to major political parties, who are contesting in the coming Lok Sabha elections, lined up in Sivakasi to support the hunger strike of the fireworks manufacturers and in the process garner votes for their parties.

The parties, however, said they did not come to the fast to get votes but to seek support to their candidature.

The MDMK chief Vaiko, who was one of them, said that if the BJP strong man and Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi comes to power in this election, all the rules imposed on the cracker industry would be scrapped.

Former DMK Minister K K S S R Ramachandran said that all the parties should stay united and show their support to the cracker industry. The DMK’s Virudhunagar constituency candidate S Rethinavelu said that he would also fight for the cracker industry.

He said that a committee should be formed with the officials from the cracker industry in order to frame the rules for the industry.

The DMK candidate further said that Chinese crackers should not enter India as they were a threat to the domestic industry.

The State secretary of CPM G Ramakrishnan, who called on the fireworks manufacturers along with the party’s Virudhunagar constituency candidate K Samuelraj, said that the Central government should immediately ban the import of Chinese crackers illegally and cancel the fees hike imposed on the cracker industry.

He said that as agriculture activity was not encouraged in the Virudhunagar district, around five lakh people depend on the cracker units for their livelihood.

The Minister for Information and Special Programme Implementation and the AIADMK district secretary K T Rajendra Balaji, who took part in the hunger strike, said that he has raised the issue with the Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and she knows that he is here. He also assured that the Chief Minister would take this issue in the national level and would speak to the owners of the cracker units in order to find a permanent solution to this problem after the elections.

He also requested the cracker unit owners to withdraw their indefinite strike and see to it that the workers’ livelihood was not affected.