New Delhi, Feb 28 (IANS): A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the name of four astronauts to lead India’s Gaganyaan mission, during his visit to ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre, a major controversy broke out in Tamil Nadu over ruling party’s eulogy of China at the cost of country’s premiere space organisation.

The row emanated after Anitha R Radhakrishnan, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) minister, purportedly shared a poster of India’s space programme, with Chinese ‘satellite’ taking centrestage.

The 'shocking' poster featuring DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, chief minister MK Stalin and other key ministers, has drawn strong reactions from BJP and others, as they claimed that this amounted to disregarding country’s sovereignty and brazenly glorified China.

Hitting out hard at the DMK dispensation, Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annnamalai said that the party was desperate to seek credit and paste stickers, ever since ISRO’s second launch pad was announced in Kulasekarapatinam, a province in Thoothukudi district.

TN BJP unit chief also lambasted the DMK over its ‘past misdeeds’ and accused it of insulting nation’s top scientists at earlier occasions. He also quoted an instance of how ISRO officials were once subject to abject treatment by an ‘inebriated’ DMK minister.

He further informed that when ISRO was conceptualised, Tamil Nadu was the first choice.

“The amount of desperation only proves their attempt to bury their past misdeeds, but we must remind them that it was beacuse of DMK, why the Satish Dhawan Space Centre is today in Andhra Pradesh & not Tamil Nadu,” he said.

“TN CM Thiru Annadurai, who could not attend the meeting because of severe shoulder pain, deputed Mathiyazhagan, one of his ministers, for the meeting. ISRO officials were kept waiting for a long, and Mathiyazhagan was finally brought to the meeting in an “inebriated state” & was incoherent throughout the meeting. And, this was the treatment our country’s space programme received 60 years ago,” he further said.