In payback, Stalin criticises Modi over attempts to forge alliance with AIADMK

Asked about the Prime Minister’s remark that parties forging alliance with Congress do not have ideology, Stalin, who chaired a meeting to discuss the preparedness for the ensuing Lok Sabha elections at the DMK headquarters Anna Arivalayam, said the media reports suggest that Modi was attempting to forge alliance with the AIADMK.

“I wonder if the alliance is ideological or plundering? Modi had brought OPS and EPS together,” Stalin tersely said, refusing to elaborate his statement.

On BJP’s critique of his statement proposing Congress president Rahul Gandhi for PM candidature, Stalin reiterated that he had only expressed the views of the DMK and none had opposed it. “The view that I could have announced it later is spreading widely. I believe that people who voice such views would accept and second my proposal,” Stalin remarked.

He described the incumbent government of Modi as one worse than the emergency period of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. “She had also apologized for it,” he said and skirted a question related to third front by suggesting that he would answer the question after such a front was formed.

DMK president MK Stalin has announced an intensive statewide contact programme like his Namakku Naamey to prepare for the ensuing Lok Sabha elections. 

Stalin who chaired a meeting of party MLAs, MPs and district secretaries at the DMK headquarters Anna Arivalayam to check the poll preparedness for the ensuing Lok Sabha elections, announced meetings in all 12,617 panchayats in the state beginning January 3, 2019.

The DMK chief also released the slogan “Go to people, inform people and win the hearts of people,” exclusively for the contact programme, which, unlike the Namakku Naamey starred by Stalin, would be attended by the party functionaries from the headquarters and speakers. Stalin announced the intensive outreach program on receipt of reports delivered by the functionaries appointed as in charge for all 39 Parliamentary constituencies.

Stalin had earlier constituted a committee of MLAs to monitor the functioning of booth committees to prepare for the Parliamentary elections. A DMK district secretary, who attended the meeting, said the panchayat level meetings would cover four villages in a day and they have been advised to visit the headmen of all villages during the meetings. The high command has also circulated to its district secretaries a tentative itinerary for the outreach programme. The district leaders were instructed to ensure that they cover all the panchayats before the Lok Sabha polls.

Understandably, the meeting proposal did create doubts in the minds of a few district secretaries who drew the leadership’s attention to similar monthly meetings being organised by Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam.