Doesn’t Koodankulam have a nuclear power plant, which has agitated locals and activists alike? DMDK chief ‘Captain’ Vijayakant doesn’t seem to think so. Why else would he keep referring to it as the Koodankulam Thermal Power Plant at the ninth anniversary celebrations of the party in Thoothukudi on Sunday?
Slip of the tongue? There were more gems. Sample this: while referring to protests against a titanium di-oxide plant promoted by Tata, he kept referring to it as Tata Nano. He went on to say that 3,000 people would have got jobs had the ‘Tata Nano’ plant been set up in Thoothukudi district.
Here’s another nugget. Former Union minister and Madurai strongman M K Alagiri has a sobriquet, ‘Anja Nenjan’. Everyone else in Tamil Nadu knows about it, except perhaps Vijayakant. During his address, he chose to refer to Alagari’s elder sibling M K Muthu as ‘Anja Nenjan’. Again, while speaking about the sand mafia menace, he referred to Uttar Pradesh IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal who fought it, as Durga Devi. Besides, he referred to S Vaikundarajan, promoter of VV Minerals, as V Vaikundarajan.
Nobody dare correct him, as he slapped party candidate A Bhaskaran in Dharmapuri in the run up to the 2011 Assembly polls for having the guts to prompt him to say his correct name.