In a continuing attempt to tap the vote bank among film fans, BJP Prime Ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi had a meeting with ‘Ilayathalapathy’ Vijay at a private hotel in Coimbatore, ahead of a party meeting on the campaign trail.
The meeting with the popular actor, who has a sizeable fan following among a section of the youth, comes close on the heels of Modi personally calling on Tamil film superstar Rajinikanth at the latter’s residence in Chennai last week.
Like in the case of Rajinikanth, Modi quickly posted photos of his meeting with Vijay on his Facebook site. Curiously enough, the pictures were rabidly circulated by the actor’s fans on social media sites through Wednesday evening. News of the scheduled meeting emerged when Vijay’s official fan account on Twitter posted, “Indeed privileged to be invited to a non-political meeting with Narendra Modiji. Looking forward to (meeting) him.”
One of the actor’s spokespersons confirmed that Modi had reached out to Vijay previously to try and meet him on his previous trips, “They had asked us if Modiji could meet Vijay the last two times, but he was busy shooting. This time he was shooting near Pollachi, so the meeting at Coimbatore was easy to arrange,” he said. When Modi visited in January, Vijay was busy promoting his film Jilla, while he was shooting for A R Murugadoss’ Kaththi earlier this week.
Though Modi or Vijay refused to comment to waiting media persons about the meeting that took place at a five star hotel near the Coimbatore airport, observers were unwilling to buy the claim that it was a courtesy meeting.
At Wednesday’s public meeting, BJP state treasurer S R Sekar declared, “Superstar Rajinikanth has already shown his support for Modi. Now, Vijay has turned up to meet him.” However Vijay did not share the dais with Modi.
The widely publicised photos of Modi with Rajinikanth and Vijay, has added the missing ‘star’ element to the BJP’s campaign. Bereft of star campaigners such as Khushbu, Vindhya, Senthil and Vagai Chandrasekar who are actively canvassing for votes for the DMK and AIADMK, the BJP had so far gone with stardust from ‘Captain’.