Tamil Nadu Handlooms and Textiles Minister O.S. Manian on Wednesday asserted that he was never allowed to meet late chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in the hospital.
"We used to go to hospital but were only briefed by Chairman Prathap Reddy," OS Manian when he was asked whether he saw Jayalalithaa in hospital or not.
Earlier, Tamil Nadu Forest Minister Dindigul Sreenivasan also levelled serious allegations on Sasikala and said that she and her family had access to Jayalalitha when she was admitted in Chennai's Apollo Hospital last year.
He also admitted that he and all other Tamil Nadu ministers used to lie about Jayalalitha's health.
During a public meeting at Madurai, Sreenivasan had said, "Jayalalithaa brought AIADMK as third largest party of India. Sasikala said so many things to make you believe she is healthy but truth is no one had seen her. Only VK Sasikala and her family had access to see Amma, rest no one was allowed."
He further said, "In order to make you believe in Jayalalithaa's health, we have uttered so many things like she ate idly, she drank water etc. To tell you frankly, nobody saw her. This is truth. He saw, she saw, etcetera were nothing at all. Just we would go till upstairs, bow down then we would return. Forgive me my party workers, but all of us ministers lied before you when we said Amma is alright."
Recently, a panel was formed under retired Madras High Court judge Justice A Arumugasamy on to probe the death of Jayalalithaa.
More From This Section
Commenting on it, he said, "People demanded clarification in the matter, so to stand by their demand, this panel was constituted. Also, the party cadre was demanding to know the exact matter, so the Tamil Nadu Chief Minter took the decision. So the doubts among people will soon be sorted out. "
Reserving his words on brouhaha over Kamal Hasan and Rajnikanth's entry into the state's politics, he just said, "Everyone in the democratic government has right to politics.