Annamalai exudes confidence ahead of counting
Chennai: The BJP would spring a surprise to everyone by bagging at least 10 seats – of the 39 seats in the State – when the counting of votes was taken up on June 4, the party’s State president K Annamalai said on Monday.
Briefing the media after a State-level meeting of party functionaries at a kalyana mandapam in Chennai, he said the BJP, on its own, would win 370 seat at the national level and the NDA on the whole would emerge victorious in 400 seats, providing a clear majority for Narendra Modi to start his third innings in government.
In the meeting of party functionaries, Annamalai had warned of cracking whip on all those who were found to have erred in the run up to the April 19 elections in the State. He said that he had received several complaints and that he would launch an investigation after the results were announced.
There would be changes on the party organization based on the enquiries that would be held and action would be taken on those who were found to have erred, he has reportedly stated.
Replying to questions from the media, he said that Modi did not say that he was God and alleged that he was being misquoted. Modi only said that it was karma that had brought him into the world.
He also sought to deny all the charges that were being made against the BJP leaders on their recent statements regarding cancellation of reservation and described everything as a misquote, and clarified each one of them.
To Congress leader E V K S Elangovan’s request to him to serve beef when protestors went to the BJP office, Annalamalai said that he should know, as a Congress leader, as to what Mahatma had said about the sacred cow.
Annamalai said that he cannot be forced to serve anything that he did not like to do and that he worshipped the cow.
The controversy started with TNCC president K Selvaperunthogai announcing a siege of the BJP office and Annamalai saying that if they gave the number of people coming for the protest it would enable them to provide lunch for all of them. Taking a cue from that, Elangovan asked Annamalai to serve beef to the Congress party protestors.
On his own statement that former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was a Hindutva supporter, which drew flak from several AIADMK leaders, Annamalai stood his ground and tried to prove a point by quoting several instances from the past.
He also said that former Chief Justice of India J S Verma had, in a judgment in 1995, said that Hindutva was only a way of life and a tradition and recalled a few remarks of Jayalalithaa like her support for the Uniform Civil Code, the removal of Article 370 and on the Ram temple.
Jayalalithaa would have visited the Ram temple, if she had been alive now, Annamalai said and recalled that she was not in favour of the breaking of the Ram Sethu in the Indian ocean for the implementation of the Sethusamudram project.
The BJP leader said that Jayalalithaa was prepared to rebuild the RSS office in Chennai after it was damaged in a bomb blast and added that it was the RSS that declined the offer. He questioned the stand of the present AIADMK leaders on the statement that Jayalalithaa was a Hindutva acolyte.