They Don’t Know If It Will Be An AIADMK Rule Or NDA Rule: CM

Chennai: Leaders of the BJP-AIADMK coalition in the State were at a loss to know as to who – the NDA or the AIADMK - would form the next government if their alliance swept the Assembly elections, Chief Minister M K Stalin said, mocking at the conflicting views on it expressed on Sunday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami from the same stage in Madurai.

Inaugurating the Tamil Nadu Leadership Summit organized in Chennai by The Week magazine on Monday, Stalin said that when he launched his party’s campaign for the coming Assembly elections itself he had said that it was a ‘Tamil Nadu Vs NDA’ conflict, which had been confirmed by the Prime Minister and his Home Minister Amit Shah whenever they visited the State.

In the match between the Tamil Nadu team and Delhi team, Tamil Nadu would definitely win and DMK Rule 2.0 would beat its own record as the party would continue to be in the same mission mode, in which it was now, to turn his vision of making the State a ‘US $ 100 Trillion economy’ by 2031 a reality, he said.

When he assumed power in 2021, he came in with a 10-year vision and long term goals for development and the State had progressed at a pace faster than what he had envisaged then, according to the latest State Economic Survey, Stalin said, adding that he had been devising schemes taking into the account the needs of the people.

He also listened to the complaints of not only the people but also the opposition parties and the people themselves knew very well that the DMK stood for development and that development meant DMK rule, the Chief Minister said and ridiculed Modi for making a remark that the construction of the Maduravoyal to Chennai harbor flyover was delayed because of the DMK.

It was the AIADMK, with which the BJP had now struck an alliance, that stopped the construction of the flyover and even took the matter to the court against the project, which was revived only by the efforts of the DMK after it came to power, he said. Since the BJP had nothing to mention as achievements, the Prime Minister was trying to blame the DMK, he said.

To a question on how he proposed to manage the mega alliance that he had tied together by roping in a wide range of parties, he said the coalition was formed on the basis of principles and not on the strength of numbers and more parties were likely to join it in future, too.

Asked about the remark of the Prime Minister that the DMK’s wish to form a government again in the State would turn out to be a mirage, he said that Modi’s long-time dream of the BJP forming a government in Tamil Nadu had been a mirage and it would continue to be so.