Fix yardstick to end subsidy, Karuna tells Centre

Counselling caution in reducing subsidies, DMK chief Karunanidhi today urged Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to come up with a yardstick for delineating the rich and poor to ensure that the indigent and middle class families were not affected in the process.
"Reasonable yardsticks should be framed while determining the rich, the less rich and the poor," he said in a statement here urging the Centre to be very cautious while taking steps to cancel subsidy.
"Jaitley, while framing such yardsticks, should remember that it should in no way impact the poor and middle class families," he said reacting to the Finance Minister's remarks questioning the justification of "unquantified" subsidy amounts to "unidentifiable" sections.

Referring to criticism of "Sanskritisation," after BJP assumed power at the Centre and criticism against it, the 90-year old leader said it would be good for Modi to wriggle out of such accusations.
On the proposed dam across Cauvery near Mekedatu in Karnataka, he said the ruling and opposition parties were united in the neighbouring state, however, in Tamil Nadu the ruling party had not even heeded the plea for an all party meeting to discuss the issue.