TIRUCHY: Coming from a humble background, she began her political journey on the college campus. Today, she is the Congress MP from Karur. The New Indian Express caught up with 45-year-old Jothimani Sennimalai, during her the jam-packed campaign schedule, where she opened up about the “wave” that seemed to have gripped voters in this crucial election season.
Jothimani said, "Even before the election, I used to travel widely across my parliamentary constituency and visited over 6,000 villages across four different districts. I sensed a wave even before the election. There is a clear anti-incumbency feeling among the people. And now, with the AIADMK joining hands with the BJP, I feel it has doubled."
"The 2019 Lok Sabha election gave the DMK and its allies a clean sweep across the State. The major reason for the victory was attributed to the anti-BJP mindset of the people. Here, in 2021, the contest is clearly between Edappadi K Palaniswami and MK Stalin," she added.
Comparing the "wave" between the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and this year's Assembly polls, Jothimani said that in the parliamentary election, apart from the anti-incumbency wave against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there was also wide spread support to project Rahul Gandhi as Prime Minister, but in this election, people would like to see Stalin as Chief Minister.
About the charges that the DMK and its allies are not putting in the required groundwork in Aravakurichi where the BJP has placed its IPS-turned-politician Annamalai, she said, "Aravakurichi, apart from falling in my parliamentary constituency, is also my home seat. It is the place where I come from and I have taken direct charge of overseeing the election there along with DMK leader Senthil Balaji."
"I spend most of my time there and have seen DMK functionaries working hard there. The only reason we keep getting this sort of misinformation is because the BJP is spreading it. The party is synonymous with lie. Though Annamalai is a former IPS officer, he is behaving like a local rowdy. They are claiming that they were not allowed to campaign in Palapatti, a Muslim-dominated area. But nobody said a BJP candidate cannot campaign in Muslim-dominated areas. I don’t see a tough fight in Aravakurichi," she added.
She also went on to add that voters in Tamil Nadu are basically clever and the Aravakurichi people are civilised and would not get carried away by lies and false propaganda. Jothimani dismissed the idea of a third front becoming a force to reckon with in the State, saying, "I have been in politics for 25 years and I don’t think that there will ever be a third front in the State."
On Kamal Haasan's claim that Dravidian parties have destroyed the State in the last 50 years and that they cannot offer honest governance, she said, "Politics in Tamil Nadu is based on understanding the people at the grassroots level, who expect their representatives to function 24x7 and expect them to be a part of all the good and bad. Kamal Haasan's policies about reservation, corruption, and development are very vague, similar to the right-wing people. He is definitely not a Centrist and people will understand it."