May 6 turned out to be Chennai’s Super Friday with the metro witnessing three star campaigners of the 2016 Tamil Nadu Assembly election hitting the campaign trail in the city and that tool simultaneously.
The superstar of Friday’s campaign was none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi who crisscrossed Kerala and Tamil Nadu campaigning for the BJP candidates for the May 16 Assembly elections. Prime Minister Modi addressed a mammoth rally at Hossur in south-west Tamil Nadu where he was in his usual form, inspiring and enthusing the audience with his characteristic charm and élan. What added to the spectacle was Munawari Beegum, a Muslim woman, translating the Prime Minister’s speech in Hindi to chase Tamil. She is the Tamil Nadu chief of BJP’s minority wing.
In a surprise move, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa too undertook a roadshow in RK Nagar constituency, a city suburb from where she is seeking election to the Assembly. Her cavalcade left Veda Nilayam, her Poes Garden residence at 5 pm and she was greeted by thousands belonging to the AIADMK cadre lining both sides of the road. Jayalalithaa preferred her custom-built tempo traveller for Friday’s Aswamedha leaving her favourite Toyota Prado for the day.
She addressed the people from the van itself. Jayalalithaa was elected from the constituency in June 2015 with a landslide majority of more than 1.5 lakh votes. In her brief speech, the Chief Minister listed the development works carried out in the constituency and elsewhere in the State. She also explained the important points in the AIADMK manifesto which she released at Perundhurai on Thursday. If the reception accorded to Jayalalithaa at RK Nagar is any indication, chances are that her rivals in the constituency stand no chance of posing any threat to her.
The DMK-Congress alliance in the State has been rejuvenated following Thursday’s election rally addressed by Sonia Gandhi, the prima donna of the Congress. This made DMK chief Muthuvel Karunanidhi (93) too to lead a motorcade through various places in Chennai on Friday.
His voice has started wavering and dithering but the nonagenarian DMK patriarch was in high spirits during the rally. Accompanied by Dayanidhi Maran, his grand nephew who is an accused in the Aircel-Maxis deal, the Grand Old Man of Tamil Nadu politics pleaded with the people of the city to vote DMK back to power so that he could give them a transparent and corruption-free Government for the next five years. Karunanidhi’s old friends and well wishers, were in attendance to hear the words of their one-time glamour boy.
More is on anvil for Tamil Nadu. Rahul Gandhi is addressing an election rally in the city suburb on Saturday. “This will be a turning point in the Tamil Nadu Assembly election. Thousands of youth are expected in the rally to be addressed by Rahul Gandhi,” said CD Meyyappan, AICC member who is overseeing the organisation of the rally. He said the visit by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi has changed the course of the Assembly election in the State.
Political observers are of the view that the DMK-Congress front has reached steps away from the AIADMK which was far ahead of others when the campaign was launched. As election campaign enters the final phase on Saturday, the next nine days has become crucial as well as critical for all the main characters in the fray.