AIADMK rule suffocating people, says Khushbu

CHENNAI: All India Congress Committee national spokesperson Khushbu Sundar is considered outspoken and has faced a backlash in the past for some of her comments. Yet, the successful actor-producer and mother of two, doesn't mince words while expressing her disapproval of the sycophancy surrounding chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
Though she has spent three decades in the city , and was one of Tamil film industry's biggest stars, the largerthan-life cutouts, posters and banners of the chief minister still bewilder Khushbu, born and brought up in Mumbai.She contrasts this “bannerposter culture“ with the relatively low-profile chief ministers of neighbouring states Karnataka and Kerala, who seem more accessible.
“People of Tamil Nadu have been suffering under the suffocating rule of the AIADMK government in the last five years. There is a jaillike atmosphere here. It's like `my word or no other word',“ she told TOI, in an informal chat at her home in Santhome.
“I don't know what thrill Jayalalithaa amma gets out of looking at her banners eve ryday , I don't understand. It's only her. You don't see this anywhere else. I think she enjoys it,“ she says, with a smile.
Before and after the chief minister's trips, she laments, “roads are blocked, there is a lot of traffic, pedestrians and school children are forced to walk on the main road.“
She recalled that she recently travelled with Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah in his car to an event in Bangalore. “I did not see any banner, poster nor 20 cars behind and front of him,“ she said.
“There was one car in the front and one car behind. Only when he was leaving his home, on the main road, they blocked the signal and then we moved.
“Everywhere else it was smooth sailing. We are so used to seeing banners of our CM and traffic blocked, that it was a relief to see no banners at all,“ she said.
Describing the banners of the CM as “in your face“, she pointed out that in Karnataka, they don't have that culture.
“It's not just Congress, even when BJP was ruling, hey didn't have that culture.“
She criticized the AIADMK-led government for mplementing schemes “only wo months before the elec ion.“
The Congress, which recently announced a poll tieup with the DMK, is very clear that “we need to bring in a rule that is absolutely common man friendly ,“ she said.
She credited TNCC president E V K S Elangovan with “making the right noises“ and ensuring the Congress is now “front page news.“
Khushbu will be campaigning for the party in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala n the coming months.