Tamil Nadu can't progress without Centre's support: Tamilisai Soundararajan

CHENNAI: BJP state president Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan endorsed her party senior and Union Minister of State for Finance and Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan’s assertion that he too is a ‘Pachchai Tamizhan,’ (a true-blood Tamil) has said that the State cannot progress without the Centre's support.

"As the BJP is ruling at the Centre only our party could ensure more development and welfare to TN,” she said. Dr. Tamilisai claimed that the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu created an impression among the people that the BJP is against the Tamils. "It is not so we are also Dravidians. The BJP here is a state party with national feeling and as a national party we have concern for Tamil Nadu and its people,” she said on Wednesday. She claimed that the Dravidian parties in TN projected themselves as the custodians of Tamils but was not correct. “We are not inferior to them in any way. We have been voicing the concerns of the Tamils and striving for the welfare of TN," she said and claimed that this has prompted Mr. Radhakrishnan to say he was a Dravidian.

Reacting to the Andal controversy, Mr Radhakrishnan had recently remarked that he too was a ‘Pachchai Tamizhan,’ and that his BJP is also a Dravidian party in so far as TN was concerned. He also claimed that the junior Pontiff of the Kanchi Kamakoti Muth Sri Vijayendra Saraswathi Swamy was intentionally raised by those with vested interest to divert poet Vairamuthu’s controversial remark against Goddess Andal.

DrTamilisai who earlier in the day launched online application forms for civic bodies polls for the party members to seek permission to contest the polls, at the party headquarters – Kamalalayam, here, said the BJP would prove its strength in the civic bodies election. 

She also denied as rumours about change of guard and claimed those could not digest the growth of BJP were plotting to weaken the party. “They will not succeed,” she said without naming anyone. She also asserted that she was “discharging my duties as state leader and carrying out whatever the party high command says.”