INDIA bloc was never meant to work: AIADMK's Edappadi K Palaniswami

With INDIA bloc constituents TMC and AAP announcing they would not align with ally Congress in West Bengal and Punjab for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday said the multi-party alliance was never meant to work due to the members' different ideologies.
 

AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami also said it has to be seen "who all exits" the alliance over the course of time.
 

Besides the Congress, TMC, AAP and CPI (M)-led front, MK Stalin-headed DMK from Tamil Nadu is also a part of the 28-party opposition grouping.
 

TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister and her Punjab counterpart and AAP leader Bhagwant Mann had on Wednesday announced their parties will not join hands with Congress in their respective states for the parliamentary polls.
 

 

"Parties with different ideology and opinions formed the INDIA alliance...each party had a different policy, so were the opinions. It's difficult to work together on that basis," he told reporters here in Edappadi in Salem district.
 

"It was expected, well-known that it would not fructify, but they still tried to form that alliance...there is still time (for elections). Let us wait and see who all exits," the bloc, the Tamil Nadu Leader of Opposition, said.
 

To a question about whether the consecration of the Shri Ram temple will echo in the polls, he said "we are constructing many shrines" in Salem and his Edappadi constituency.
 

"If people start supporting someone for constructing temples, then everybody will be constructing temples," the former chief minister said.
 

People of respective faiths build their own places of worship, he added.
 

Constructing temples alone will not get votes and if that be the case, "AIADMK will always win in Edappady unopposed," he quipped.
 

A lot of temples have been constructed in his constituency, he added.
 

Further, a lot was done for temples, churches and mosques during the AIADMK regime as the party treated all faiths as equal, he said.
 

"It is wrong to say everybody will go towards a person if a temple is constructed," he said in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ram temple at Ayodhya.
 

The AIADMK had snapped ties with its then ally BJP in September last year.