In yet another record-breaking election rally at Tiruchirappalli on Saturday, J Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK general secretary and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, introduced 67 party candidates from nine districts for the May 16 Assembly elections. After her campaign speech which lasted for 55 minutes, Jayalalithaa called the names of each of the candidates from a special gallery attached to the main stage.
The AIADMK chief sprang many surprises on Saturday. Before she left Veda Nilayam, her Chennai residence, for Tiruchirappalli to address the election rally, she had two visitors: former Union Minister and Tamil Manila Congress leader SR Balasubramaniam and former DMK Minister Selvaraju, both of them called on Amma and joined the AIADMK.
At Tiruchirappalli, Namitha, the popular Tamil actress, too joined the AIADMK. Jayalalithaa inducted the glamorous actress into the party after her campaign speech. Interestingly, the Surat-born Namitha’s first movie was with Vijayakant, the actor-turned-politician, who is being projected as an alternative to Jayalalithaa.
According to sources in the AIADMK, Namitha had written to Jayalalithaa requesting her to allow the actress to become a member of the AIADMK. Namitha said in her letter that she was impressed by the leadership of Amma and wants to work for the ideology being propagated by the Tamil Nadu CM.
Earlier, in her address to the people at Tiruchirappalli, Jayalalithaa accused Karunanidhi and the DMK for spreading lies to discredit her and the AIADMK. “They (the DMK) are staging many dramas to create wrong impression about my Government in the minds of the people. You should be vigilant against such lies and dramas,” said Jayalalithaa.
Jayalalithaa also blasted at Karunanidhi for his hypocrisy and double-standard on the ethnic Tamil issue in Sri lanka. “While the Tamils were being harassed and tortured by the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government, a team of parliamentarians from India, which included Kanimozhi, went to Colombo as the guests of the Government of that country and gave a clean chit to Rajapaksa. It was me and the AIADMK which fought for the rights of the ethnic Tamils in Sri lanka and the refugees who came to India. Karunanidhi has not done anything for them,” charged Jayalalithaa.