CHENNAI: Declaring TVK the "top engine" of Tamil Nadu politics, actor and party president Vijay on Monday said opposition AIADMK was merely an appendage of the BJP and claimed his party was the sole credible alternative that could unseat the ruling DMK.
Addressing party members at TVK's third-year inaugural ceremony at the party headquarters in Panaiyur, Vijay said the political mood in Tamil Nadu had decisively shifted in favour of his party.
Recalling how new political forces were historically ridiculed before winning mass acceptance, Vijay said TVK had emerged to wipe the tears of the people who were disillusioned with the current political order.
He drew parallels with the rise of AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran, noting that ridicule and mockery had always been the default response of entrenched political players to emerging movements.
Taking a sharp dig at the principal opposition AIADMK without naming it, Vijay said the other front in fray (AIADMK-led NDA) was, in reality, a BJP-led alliance. "No matter how it is packaged, the alliance is led by the BJP," he said, framing the political contest as a three-way battle between TVK, the DMK-led front and the BJP-led bloc.
Improvising the double-engine analogy oft-repeated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vijay said, "No matter how many engines are rolled out, the people have already decided the top engine."
The actor-politician also dismissed talk of multi-cornered contests, claiming that regardless of how many fronts were formed, only TVK possessed the people's mandate to defeat the DMK. "The people, the massive force, stands with us. Only TVK can unseat the DMK," he asserted.