Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin, along with his immediate family members, left Chennai by a special flight to Madurai en route to Kodaikanal for a week-long holiday after a hectic campaign schedule in the run up to the April 19 elections in the State to elect 39 members to the Lok Sabha.
Many other leaders, including BJP State President K Annamalai, are also taking breaks as Tamil Nadu has completed the Lok Sabha election process in the first phase of polling itself and is on a long wait for the results that would be out only after June 4.
The present eerie silence in the political arena with party leaders and functionaries keeping their fingers crossed for the results to be announced after all the seven phases of polling is completed all over the country and the government finding its hands tied due to the Model Code of Conduct still in force has given an opportunity for many to look for the break with their families.
Annamalai, who started visiting temples soon after the polling was over, besides taking up campaign in Karnataka, is now planning a family holiday in Kodaikanal, the same salubrious hill station that the Chief Minister has also chosen. But his party is likely to assign him campaign duties in other States next.
Sources said that DMK MP, Kanmozhi Karunanidhi, who contested the elections from her Thoothukudi constituency once again, may also travel to Singapore, where her husband lives, in the interregnum between the polling and the counting of votes.
Many other leaders of the DMK are also planning to escape from the scorching heat in Chennai to cooler destinations like Ooty and Kodaikanal. Soon they will be all off to such destinations.
Some leaders of the DMK, as the grapevine has it, are even taking their families to Maldives in the next few days as they had exhausted themselves working long hours during the three week campaign that preceded the polling in the State.
Many top leaders of the ruling party, besides peeved by the soaring temperature in Chennai, feel that they have not much to do now as most of the party activities have come to a standstill and whatever work was left would resume only after the results were out and the new government formed.
Though the top leaders of the State BJP too would like to take a summer break and get away from the scorching heat, it is said that they had been assigned election duties in various States that are going to polls in the coming phases of voting.
The leaders from Tamil Nadu would be canvassing votes for the BJP among the Tamil speaking populations in the different States and hence they were all gearing up to take up those assignments for the party.
Since most of the key political leaders in the State feel that they might have key roles to play once the results are out by June 4 and the new government is formed in Delhi, they want to be back in their turf to meet the demands of the situation before June but fully recharged by the holiday break.
