Actor Vijay Zeroes In on Vikravandi for First Party Meet

 Chennai: Actor’s Vijay’s plan to hold the maiden conference of his nascent party, Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam, in a grand manner is finally taking shape as the organizers have applied for police permission to conduct it inside a private engineering college premises at Vikravandi in Villupuram district after a series of fiascos in identifying a ground or open space in several other districts over the past couple of months.

With the organisers, led by the Bussy N Anand, the general secretary of the actor’s fan club, Vijay Makkal Iyakkam, are aggressively into ironing out the hitches on the formal launch at Vikravandi, Vijay held a meeting with a battery of lawyers at his party headquarter in Panaiyur to check out on the possible legal hassles that might arise out of the Bahujan Samaj Party’s demand to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to not approve the newly unveiled flag.

The flag, along with the party’s anthem, was unveiled at the party secretariat compound on August 22 by Vijay with an assurance to explain the meanings of the intricate designs at the first conference. But the State BSP objected to the presence of the image of two elephants in the red and yellow flag with other elements like the Siris flower (Vagai poo in Tamil signifying victory) encircled by 28 stars.

Since the BSP has approached the ECI with its objection to the elephants on the flag, Vijay wanted to know it that could a problem, to which the legal experts had said that the elephant is only the election symbol of the BSP and not part of its flag and hence there was no chance of the ECI asking the party to change the design.

However, instructions had been issued to all the units of the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam to fly the flag in every village in the State after the ECI cleared the design.

The conference could be conducted on September 22 (Sunday) or September 23 (Monday) as those are the dates for which permission has been sought.

The Villupuram police will decide on it after taking into consideration the traffic snarls that the meeting might cause on the Grand Southern Trunk Road or National Highway 45, which normally sees a heavy movement of vehicles.

If the police give its nod, the conference will be organized in a sprawling land mass of about 400 acres as the party expects a crowd of over 1.5 lakh participants from all over the State and most of them are expected to travel by Vikravandi in cars. So, adequate space has to be provided for parking those vehicles.

The party is also specially inviting out of work senior political leaders, social activists and retired officials to join the party and provide guidance on its running, it is learnt.