DMK president MK Stalin on Friday declared that his party will never forge any kind of alliance with the “Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance” in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and shut the doors on the Prime Minister for his ‘invitation to old friends to join the NDA’.
Stalin’s statement was in response to a comment made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during an interaction with BJP’s booth level workers from five districts in Tamil Nadu through video-conferencing. “Twenty years ago the visionary leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee had ushered in a new culture in Indian politics, that of successful coalition politics,” Modi had told one of the booth level worker who asked the Prime Minister whether the BJP would have electoral alliance with the AIADMK, DMK or other political entities in the State.
Modi replied that the BJP always cherished its old friends. “Our doors are always open for parties,” he had said on Thursday. It may be remembered that the DMK was a constituent of the BJP-led NDA during 1999 to 2003 and the party’s representatives like late Murasoli Maran, T R Baalu, A Raja were members of the council of ministers led by Vajpayee. It was after the announcement of the 2004 Lok Sabha election the DMK quit the NDA and joined the Congress-led UPA.
In a scathing rebuff, Stalin said that Narendra Modi was not Atal Bihari Vajpayee and there was no possibility of the DMK joining hands with the “Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance”.
“In the last four and half years Modi has been only speaking and has not taken any steps to strengthen India’s integrity… I categorically state that the DMK will not ally with the Narendra Modi-led BJP which has been governing the country without giving credentials to the core ideas like secularism, social justice, equality, alliance dharma and federal rights. It should be noted that the DMK was part of the NDA during the 1999 Lok Sabha Elections and supported the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government until 2003,” said Stalin.
Tamil Nadu BJP leaders are perplexed over the delay by the party’s national leadership in finalising electoral understanding with regional parties in the State. “We have been told to work for the party and that’s all. But we have been also asked not to react to the criticism levelled against us by the DMK or the AIADMK and this has put us in a weak situation,” said one of the senior office bearers of the party.