Tamil Nadu’s Minister for Dairy Development KT Rajenthra Bhalaji, while interacting with reporters in the state’s Maharajapuram village, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was ‘the father of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) cadre’.
“Modi is our daddy... India’s daddy. We accept his leadership,” Bhalaji, who is AIADMK’s Virudhunagar district secretary, said as per a report in The Hindu.
He was responding to a question on how AIADMK forged an alliance with BJP given that its erstwhile leader, J Jayalalithaa, had avoided the national-level party.
“Amma’s (Jayalalithaa) decision is different. But, in the absence of (such a great) personality, Modi is our daddy. India’s daddy,” he said.
After much speculation and back-and-forth negotiations, the BJP-AIADMK-PMK had sealed an alliance on 19 February, ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha Elections.
After Union Minister Piyush Goyal had arrived in Chennai to seal the deal, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Palaniswami had announced at a press briefing: “BJP will contest on five seats in Lok Sabha elections and we will be contesting together in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.”
Goyal had said, as per PTI: “We (BJP) will support AIADMK in the by-elections on 21 Assembly seats in Tamil Nadu. We have agreed to contest elections under the leadership of OPS and EPS in the state and under Modiji at the Centre.”
Under the deal, the PMK would support AIADMK in the bypolls to be held in 21 Assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu, Panneerselvam said.
For the AIADMK, the deal with the PMK, which has a significant clout in several javascript:void(0)northern and western pockets of Tamil Nadu, is seen as a shot in the arm.
(With inputs from The Hindu, PTI)
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