Mounting pressure on the Centre to on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue, 13 Dravida Munnetra Kazhgham members of Parliament, including seven union ministers, on Friday night submitted their resignation to party patriarch and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.
The MPs, who returned from Delhi after attending the Lok Sabha session, drove straight from the airport to the DMK
headquarters to submit their letters to their leader.
The resignation letters are dated October 29 when the fortnight's deadline given by the DMK MPs to the Centre to halt Sri Lankan troops' offensive against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam expires.
An all-party convened by Karunanidhi in Chennai on Tuesday had adopted a resolution asked the centre to help end the Sri Lankan troops' offensive against Tamils in LTTE-held areas within a fortnight, failing which MPs from Tamil Nadu would quit Parliament.
Karunanidhi told reporters on Friday evening that the Centre should take firm steps to stop the 'genocide' of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
"The Centre clearly knows how to bring about peace in Sri Lanka. I hope they will decide and act. People know what happened in Bangladesh," he said.
Asked how India could interfere in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka, he said "like we did in Bangaldesh".
Asked whether he wanted a military intervention by the Centre, he said "I am not saying that India should intervene militarily. I do not believe that bullets are the answers to bullets."
The union ministers who handed over their resignation letters to Karunanidhi are T R Baalu (Shipping), A Raja (Telecom), Subulakshmi Jagadeesan (Minister of State for Social Justice), S Raghupathy (Minister of State for Environment), S S Palanimanickam (Minister of State for Finance), K Venkatapathy (Minister of State for Law) and V Radhika Selvi (Minister of State for Home).
While Karunanidhi's daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi sent her resignation to her father on Wednesday, three other Rajya Sabha members of DMK--Trichy N Siva, Vasanthi Stanley and A A Jinnah--submitted their letters to the party chief on Thursday.
The other MPs who submitted their resignations to the party chief are C Kuppusami, K C Palanisamy, E G Sugavanam, A
K S Vijayan, M S K Bhavani Rajenthiran, A Krishnasamy and Danapal Venugopal.
The resignations were in compliance with a decision taken at an all-party meeting presided by the chief minister in Chennai on Tuesday asked the Centre to act to stop military offensive in Sri Lanka failing which all MPs from the state would quit within a fortnight.
There are in all 16 Lok Sabha MPs but suspended DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran and Indian Union Muslim League MP Khader
Mohideen, who had fought the election on DMK symbol, did not come to the party headquarters to submit their resignations.
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