Tiruchy: Tension prevailed for a while when a group of BJP volunteers led by party’s state vice-President M. Subramanian shouted slogans against the DMK Rajya Sabha member Tiruchy N. Siva, who spoke in English at a Railway function here on Saturday in which Rail minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu participated. The BJP men demanded that Mr Siva speak in Tamil, raising slogans of “Bharat Matha Ke Jai”.
Siva objected to this and explained on the stage itself that since Prabhu did not know Tamil it was his duty to explain the long pending demands to him and hence he spoke in English. Despite the explanation, the BJP men continued to boo Siva.
Mr Siva came to the stage a bit late due to a flight delay, by when Mr Prabhu had completed his speech. In a fine political gesture, despite protocol, Prabhu wanted Siva to speak. But the Tamil Nadu Tourism minister, Vellamandi Natarajan, objected to that saying it was against protocol and signaled him to quickly end his (Siva’s) speech.
Later, Siva told newsmen that Natarajan, who did not know how long he would be the minister, chose to speak about protocol and took objections to the State minister’s behaviour on stage.
Siva said he spoke only on the long pending demands of the Tiruchy people for which both Natarajan and the BJP men hardly seemed to care and sought to play petty politics on the occasion.
Union Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan intervened by mollifying the state ministers: Vellamandi Natarajan and Valarmathi and pacifying the agitated party members from spoiling the otherwise peaceful function.
