Bharatiya Janata Party will have a powerful presence in the Tamil Nadu Assembly as voters have felt the need for looking beyond the AIADMK and DMK, Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said in Coimbatore on Friday.

Mr. Prasad told reporters here that the AIADMK was no different from the DMK when it came to corruption and poor governance. The parties relied on freebies, which was from tax payers’ money at the cost of development and investment.

But the problems were not just the two issues. The large picture was that the State (Tamil Nadu) was not getting investment and therefore there was not good growth.

The BJP, on the other hand, strove to provide a transparent, corruption-free government. This could be seen from the fact that The Economist had said that crony capitalism had come down from 18 per cent of the GDP in 2008 to just 3 per cent now.

The time for a change in Tamil Nadu was ripe because voters had started looking beyond the two parties. The BJP was in power at the Centre, independently in nine States and in coalition in two states. In Tamil Nadu, the BJP had helped resolve the fishermen issue in that not a fisherman was killed after party took over the Centre.

During the December 2015 floods in Chennai, Prime Minister had rushed in to help the people. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited that was under his ministry had also offered free services for a week. This showed the Central Government’s commitment to the people.

This was what the BJP had been saying – ‘sabka saath, sabka vikaas,’ Mr. Prasad said and pointed out that the BJP government in New Delhi had lent such a helping hand to people in Kerala when fireworks went off in a temple in Kollam, to people in Andhra Pradesh when cyclone ‘hud hud’ stuck Vishakapatnam and to people in Kashmir during floods.

Speaking of BSNL, he said that the State-owned telecom company had made a operative profit of Rs. 672 crore after running into loses during the UPA regime. The loss was Rs. 8,000 crore in 2014, when the UPA demitted office.

It was enjoying a profit of Rs. 10,000 crore when the BJP government left office in 2004, he recalled.

Mr. Prasad then referred to the statement of Students Federation of India leader Raj Kumar Sahu to dismiss the claim that the Central Government stifled free speech. Mr. Sahu had recently said that the protest that followed Hyderabad University student Rohit Vemula’s death was politically motivated and funded by the Congress and the Left.