)
Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Parrty’s prime ministerial candidate, said here on Sunday that the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu were only focusing on killing each other, not on serving the people. Making it the first occasion when he’d come down heavily on the ruling AIADMK, led by his political friend, J Jayalalithaa.
“DMK and AIADMK, when they are in power, spend most of their energy in destroying each other, they are not devoted to people. They can’t take people for granted and (yet) they think that the people are in their pockets,” he said.
On the same day, Jayalalithaa came down heavily on the BJP, at a public meeting in Karur, about 400 km from here.
Modi and BJP seniors started the party’s campaign in Tamil Nadu, which has 39 Lok Sabha seats, a day before the Tamil new year.
This is Modi’s fifth visit to the state, the highest number of visits he’s made to a state in south India. He leaves here on Monday morning and returns to Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, to address meetings at Coimbatore and Ramanathapuram; on Thursday, he will be at Erode and Salem.
Modi said the emergence of new strength in the BJP was in the interests of the people of Tamil Nadu.
“We have written about the idea of Team India where the PM & every chief minister works as a team, for the development of India,” said Modi. The poll, he said, was about deciding where we wanted to take the nation, an election of hope.
In a nod to regional sensibilities, Modi said it was important to strengthen India’s federal structure. Each state had different issues and priorities; one solution wouldn’t work for all.
The new government in Delhi, he said, making it clear he was talking about his own, would give priority to create jobs for youths. He said Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 1998-2004 government created 70 million jobs, many times the successor UPA regime’s achievement.
In an emotional speech, he said: “I have not been born with a silver spoon like Congress leaders. I know what poverty is. I have experienced what it is when a child has to sleep hungry. I sold tea in rail coaches. Servicing the poor is like servicing God.”
He also rapped the UPA Government for rapes in the country, especially in Delhi. “....it all happened below the nose of Sonia Gandhi but nothing was done,” said Modi. Mocking P Chidambaram, finance minister, as the ‘recounting minister’, he said: “You (FM) have allocated Rs 1,000 crore for the Nirbhaya Nidhi (named after the December 16 Delhi gangrape victim) but not even a single rupee was spent. Again in the interim budget (for this year), the same level was allocated. Whom are you trying to cheat?”
Modi, who arrived here on Sunday, met filmstar Rajinikanth at the latter’s house. Political observers say an endorsement by the latter would be a distinct boost for the BJP and its alliance partners in the state. In 1996, Rajini supported the DMK-Tamil Maanila Congress alliance, which handily beat the AIADMK in both the Lok Sabha and legislative assembly polls.
In the 2004 Lok Sabha election, Rajinikanth said he’d vote for the BJP and 2011, supported Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.
