The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) has dared the BJP to field Union Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman from Tamil Nadu for the Lok Sabha elections if the saffron party really thinks the two have grown in Tamil Nadu.
On the sidelines of the birth anniversary of their leader and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister the late J Jayalalithaa, AIADMK’s deputy general secretary K P Munusamy said at Krishnagiri on Thursday that BJP had been doing all groundwork for making former Tamil Nadu BJP president L Murugan to contest in the Lok Sabha polls but decided against it and made him their Rajya Sabha nominee from Madhya Pradesh because they knew they can’t win here.
The AIADMK that was previously part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 Assembly elections with BJP’s support until it broke ties with the NDA last September,
The senior AIADMK leader dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi and state BJP president K Annamalai to make Union Ministers Sitharaman and Jai Shankar, who have close ties with Tamil Nadu, to contest from any constituency in the state.
“If BJP has the guts and belief that the people of Tamil Nadu will vote for them, let them make these two Union Ministers to contest from here… Then you (BJP) will get to know what lesson the people of Tamil Nadu will teach you. This is Dravidian soil,” he said.
Reacting to BJP leader Annamalai’s allegations that because of the two Dravidian parties – AIADMK and DMK, the state of Tamil Nadu has deteriorated in many sectors, Munusamy said Tamil Nadu has remained the top-performing state in the field of education, health, and water management in the country and under AIADMK, it has received various awards from the BJP-led centre government in this regard.
“The people of Tamil Nadu are well-informed about the state of things and have a clarity about who should be voted to power. It is because of this, for the past 50 years, the national parties are unable to set foot here and the Dravidian parties continue to rule,” he said.
The AIADMK leader further said that it doesn’t matter whether BJP wins 300 or more seats in the upcoming election, but in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, it is going to be the AIADMK-led alliance which is going to emerge victorious in all 40 seats.
“DMK, another Dravidian party, is our competitor, not you (BJP). You may claim now that you are the second biggest party here, but only after election results, we will know where you are placed and in how many constituencies you will lose even the money deposited for polls,” he added.
Munusamy’s comments come in the wake of pre-poll analysis of a popular Tamil TV news channel which had predicted that BJP will secure over 18 per cent vote share and will emerge as the second biggest party in the state pushing AIADMK to the third spot. The report was slammed by AIADMK that alleged that the survey lacked transparency.
The Supreme Court has overturned its previous ruling that provided legislators with immunity from bribery charges for their votes and speeches in Parliament and Legislative Assemblies. The seven-judge bench, led by the CJI, declared that this interpretation goes against the Indian constitution. The judgment also stated that bribery is not protected under Articles 105(2) and 194.
