Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Wednesday termed as a “disgraceful approach” and “distortion of federal principles” the Union government returning the detailed project reports (DPRs) submitted for building metro networks in Coimbatore and Madurai citing lack of adequate population in both cities.

The grounds on which the DPRs were returned — both cities do not have a population of 20 lakh as per the National Metro Rail Policy, 2017 — were “flimsy”, Stalin said, while asserting that a government exists to serve people without any bias.

He sought to know why Madurai and Coimbatore were overlooked when the Union government had approved metro networks for tier-II cities with less than 20 lakh population in BJP-ruled States. Cities like Indore whose population is less than 20

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