Madurai: The DMK has found an unusual companion, the AIADMK, to share its tirades against the BJP and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in the run-up to the parliamentary elections.
The scriptwriter for this ‘bizarre’ episode is none other than DMK treasurer and party’s key campaigner M.K. Stalin who throughout his campaign raised pertinent questions about the silence maintained by AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa on BJP and Modi ever since she hit the trail.
And on Saturday, Jayalalithaa has started training guns at the BJP. Thus, the traditional political rivals in the Dravidian land of Tamil Nadu have found a common foe in BJP and its leader Modi. This is the first time in Tamil Nadu politics two bitter rivals are sharing a common agenda.
Stalin, who has been shouldering the campaign responsibility more than his septuagenarian father and party chief M. Karunanidhi, had prompted the AIADMK leader to attack the BJP on her campaign platforms. He has made the attack on BJP a mandatory provision in his poll speeches.
Launching his state-wide campaign from Kanyakumari constituency on March 14, he for the first time raised doubts about the intention behind the AIADMK leader’s silence over the BJP in her poll rallies.
At Udumalpet on March 30, he went a step ahead saying the “tacit understanding” was understandable since Jayalalithaa had attended Modi’s swearing-in ceremony as the Gujarat chief minister and the latter had reciprocated.
He repeatedly raised the “theory of suspicion” against her saying that if the DMK was elected, it would support only a secular government at the Centre and criticised the BJP’s alliance as an “opportunistic one of a communal party.”
Later, the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK), whose political wing, the Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK), is contesting from Mayiladuthurai and Indian Union Muslim League from Vellore in the DMK alliance too exploited her silence on Modi to get the Muslims rally en masse behind the DMK.
But when the Towheed Jamath, which earlier supported the AIADMK, announced its decision to withdraw and back DMK in 36 constituencies and Congress in three including Mayiladuthurai, the AIADMK supremo, started attacking the BJP for its “anti-Tamil” stance on issues such as Cauvery.
