Some workers of the Congress party and the DMK came close to blows near the memorial of Quaid-E-Milleth when they came face to face on their way to pay homage to the founder of the IUML on his birth anniversary but were separated by the leaders of both parties and the police.
Chennai: The political realignments that were triggered by the results of the Assembly elections have only led to bad blood among the parties as it was evident from two unrelated events in Chennai on Friday with one of them eading to a situation that required people to separate two group that almost came to blows and the another one that was an exchange of angry words.
Some workers of the Congress party and the DMK came close to blows near the memorial of Quaid-E-Milleth when they came face to face on their way to pay homage to the founder of the IUML on his birth anniversary but were separated by the leaders of both parties and the police.
The incident occurred when the DMK cadre were waiting for their president M K Stalin to visit the memorial in Triplicane when a group of TVK functionaries were going to the memorial, along with Congress members.
Spotting the Congress members, led by TNCC president K Selvaperunthogai, the DMK members started shouting ‘betrayers,’ berating over the Congress moving to the TVK camp without a proper goodbye, which was objected by the Congress functionaries who raised counter slogan accusing the DMK of betrayal.
Nothing untoward happened as the IUML volunteers immediately intervened and prevented the situation from turning ugly. Later the groups went inside the memorial and paid their respects to the late leader separately.
The other incident was an exchange of words between Praveen Chakravarty, newly nominated Congress candidate to the Rajya Sabha, and leaders of both the Communist parties. Charavarty, who filed his nomination for the June 28 election on Friday, claimed in a social media post that he was the first Rajya Sabha nominee of the ‘Tamil Nadu Social Justice Progressive Front’ comprising the TVK, the Congress, VCK, IUML,CPI and CPM.
Objecting to that claim, Communist leaders said that it was not right to say that he was nominated by the new front, saying that they continued to be part of the front led by the DMK in the State and supported the TVK government in the vote of confidence for certain reasons that they had already explained in detail.
CPM State secretary P Shanmugham said that no one had approached the CPM for the formation of such a front or even extending support to Chakravarty in the Rajya Sabha elections. CPI State secretary M Veerapandian also hit out at the Congress leader for making that statement and clarified that his party was not part of the front.
