Chennai, Jan. 7: The Karunanidhi government today ran into an onslaught by a united Opposition in the Assembly and an embarrassing order from the high court later in the day.

A division bench of Madras High Court directed the government that its advertisements on the cultural event, Chennai Sangamam, should not feature the name of Tamil Mayiam, an NGO, which was raided by the CBI as part of the 2G scandal. Chief minister M. Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi is associated with the NGO.

The court, in its interim order, also said there should be no financial transactions between the government and the NGO. Advocate P. Pugalenthi said the tourism department should not associate itself with the NGO when it was being investigated by the CBI.

Tamil Mayiam has been promoted by Fr. Jegath Gasper Raj, and Kanimozhi is a director of the NGO.

The NGO has been organising the Chennai Sangamam for the past four years and Gasper had claimed that the state tourism department had only provided logistics support.

The announcement about this year’s event starting from January 12 was made by Kanimozhi in the presence of Gasper and the state tourism minister Suresh Rajan.

In the Assembly, when the governor began his address, MLAs from the AIADMK, MDMK, CPM and the CPI reeled out a chargesheet against the DMK government on the telecom scandal, the price rise and alleged deterioration in law and order.

But governor Surjit Singh Barnala kept reading out the address which praised the various welfare measures of the government and the leadership of Karunanidhi.

The Speaker had to get the agitating MLAs evicted, only to find that they got greater media mileage on the corridors of the Assembly as they held out plates filled with vegetables to highlight the price increase.

“The common man has been so badly hit by the massive increase in prices that even having a decent meal has become so expensive. The Karunanidhi government is an active collaborator in the loot of the consumer and has not done anything to stop the smuggling of PDS rice meant for the common man,” said AIADMK deputy leader . Panneerselvam.

In the governor’s address, the DMK government announced the scrapping of a discretionary quota in allotting flats and plots of the housing board after a series of exposes on how politicians and bureaucrats close to the government had benefited by out-of-turn allotments.

The Karunanidhi government had taken cover behind the contention that such discretionary allotments were made even by the Jayalalithaa government.