Chennai: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the name of four astronauts to lead India’s Gaganyaan mission, during his visit to ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre, a major controversy broke out in Tamil Nadu over ruling party’s eulogy of China at the cost of country’s premiere space organisation.
The row emanated after Anitha R Radhakrishnan, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) minister, purportedly shared a poster of India’s space programme, with Chinese ‘satellite’ taking centrestage.
The ‘shocking’ poster featuring DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, chief minister MK Stalin and other key ministers, has drawn strong reactions from BJP and others, as they claimed that this amounted to disregarding country’s sovereignty and brazenly glorified China.
Hitting out hard at the DMK dispensation, Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annnamalai said that the party was desperate to seek credit and paste stickers, ever since ISRO’s second launch pad was announced in Kulasekarapatinam, a province in Thoothukudi district.
TN BJP unit chief also lambasted the DMK over its ‘past misdeeds’ and accused it of insulting nation’s top scientists at earlier occasions. He also quoted an instance of how ISRO officials were once subject to abject treatment by an ‘inebriated’ DMK minister.
He further informed that when ISRO was conceptualised, Tamil Nadu was the first choice.