CHENNAI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday held a roadshow in Chennai, during his two-day visit to the state, as part of his campaign in support of party candidates ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
Tamil Nadu goes to polls in the first phase on April 19.
It being Modi's seventh visit to Tamil Nadu this year (but first since the announcement of the Lok Sabha polls) has led Chief Minister MK Stalin to question whether Tamil Nadu is a bird sanctuary for the Prime Minister to visit only during election season?
At the Chennai roadshow, Modi continued to harp on the Katchatheevu issue by targeting the Congress and DMK. He said surrendering the island to Sri Lanka shows the complicity of the two parties in harming the country's strategic interests.
Modi in his address said, "The recent public information on the Katchatheevu surrender points to how Congress and DMK were complicit in harming our strategic interests and the well-being of our fishermen and fisherwomen. No wonder this time, Chennai is all set to reject DMK and Congress."
Modi had recently targeted Congress over the ceding of the islet in 1974 by the Indira Gandhi-led government.
He had cited a media report to assert that new facts revealed that the Congress "callously" gave away Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka.
He had trained his guns against the DMK as well.
Many analysts, Al Jazeera reports, believe the BJP’s decision to bring up Katchatheevu is aimed only at helping it in Tamil Nadu during the election. It is a state where the BJP has only a small presence and won no seats in the 2019 vote. There are 39 national constituencies in Tamil Nadu, with an average of 1.51 million voters in each.
“The fact the issue has been raised in the midst of the elections clearly shows it has been done in the hope of gaining some support in Tamil Nadu where the BJP so far has failed to gain any foothold,” Al Jazeera cited Sudheendra Kulkarni, a former BJP politician and current columnist, who served as a director of operations in the Prime Minister’s Office under the previous BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, between 1999 and 2004, as saying.
Meanwhile, addressing an election rally in Madurai in support of the DMK candidates and its allies, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin charged Prime Minister Narendra Modi with visiting the state only during the poll season and accused him of utilising the central agencies to target the opposition-ruled states.
The situation was similar in most of the non-BJP-ruled states across the country where the central agencies and even the Governors created trouble to state governments.
"This is Modi's India," Stalin said addressing an election rally in support of the DMK candidates and its allies.
"Is Tamil Nadu a bird sanctuary for the Prime Minister to visit during election season? Why so much malice? Aren't Tamils citizens of this country?" Stalin asked.
He said the DMK was not an antagonist of Hindus but had carried out numerous initiatives through the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department.
"I am asking for your votes with pride over the many achievements of the Dravidian model of governance in these three years," Stalin, who is the president of DMK, said.
(With inputs from PTI)
