Are EPS, OPS pulling a leaf out of BJP’s strategy book?

There are palpable similarities between the two visits. The visit of EPS and OPS to Kolathur may have been prompted by the onslaught of the DMK and its working president Stalin on the flood issue, as was it in the case of BJP’s Shah who made a quick sortie to Amethi after Rahul steamrolled the BJP in saffron hinterland and poll-bound Gujarat. That the CM and his Deputy nearly aped the BJP has left many tongues wagging in the DMK and the AIADMK alike. 

As if there was any dearth in the speculation, Sulur MLA Kanagaraj, presently a support of EPS regime, said the Lotus (symbol of BJP) and “Two Leaves” (AIADMK) would jointly blossom soon. Kanagaraj left little to doubt when he sufficiently indicated that the two parties would forge an alliance soon, a speculation spin doctors were making for a while now, more so after the reunion of the EPS and OPS factions. Unlike Rahul Gandhi, the DMK’s Stalin gave some fodder to his critics in the rival camp by ‘mistiming’ his trip to Sharjah, understood to be for a book fair. 

State Information and Publicity Minister Kadambur Raju was quick to cash in on Stalin’s absence by remarking that the Leader of Opposition was in West Asia when his voters were braving floods here in the state capital. 

Even before Stalin’s PR managers got into damage control mode, netizens and the DMK bashers were busy circulating a photograph showing Stalin and his wife Durga in a vintage car. While the authenticity of the photograph has yet to be confirmed, DMK critics were happily sharing the photograph.