AIADMK leaders blame media for highlighting ‘food wastage’ at party’s Madurai conference

While netizens slammed the AIADMK for not making proper arrangements to minimise the wastage of food, former AIADMK minister R B Udhayakumar accused the media of blowing the incident out of proportion. He also alleged that due to the ‘non-cooperation’ of the police, many party workers could not make it to the event leading to the wastage of food.

“Anticipating these kinds of things, we had approached the court and asked it to provide security for the conduct of the event. The police did not arrange any facility and diverted the vehicles of our cadre about 30-50 km from the event area. Only after protests, did our cadre manage to enter this place. I condemn this attitude of the police. If they had followed the court order, 50 lakh people would have turned up at the event. But despite all these hurdles, 15 lakh party workers made it to the program,” he said.

When asked about complaints of poor quality of food, the AIADMK leader argued that food was prepared in 750 cooking vessels and there might have been some mistake somewhere. He said the party is probing the matter and added that a few media houses are busy highlighting the food wastage issue when others are focusing on the success of the event.

The catering in-charge of the event, Ganapathi, told a private television channel that they prepared the amount of food based on instructions from the party.

He claimed that among the three food distribution counters at the event, there were complaints regarding the quality of tamarind rice distributed from Counter A. Ganapathi added that they received overall positive feedback from guests and organisers.

He further said that some workers dumped the excess food in a hurry as they needed to transport the utensils Monday.