Chennai: AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami asserted that his party walking out on the BJP was final and dispelled all doubts raised over a possible reunion after a few of its MLAs attended a meeting addressed by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday in Coimbatore and also met her privately.
Breaking the silence that he had been maintaining since September 25 when the party announced the split, Palaniswami told the media at Salem after participating in an event to launch welfare schemes in his constituency, that the decision to leave the NDA and the BJP was based on the views of the two crore cadre who were not pleased with some of the recent local developments.
Denying reports that the split was prompted by the BJP making unreasonable demands on the allocation of seats for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, he said the party faced no pressure from any national leader of the BJP, be it Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Home Minister Amit Shah or J P Nadda.
Making it clear that there was no question of going back on the snapping of ties with the BJP, Palaniswami, in reply to a question on the DMK describing the split as a drama, said that what was going on in the INDIA coalition, in which the DMK is a part, at the national level was actually a drama.
Pointing out the hitches faced by the INDIA coalition in keeping the parties with different views together, he said the Aam Aadmi Party was not willing to be with the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and similar rumblings were happening in West Bengal, too, with TMC not prepared to align with the Communists. Even in Kerala, the Communists were not prepared to join hands with the Congress
At the September 25 meeting of all district secretaries and other office-bearers, AIADMK had unanimously decided to part ways with the BJP and lead an alliance of its own for the Lok Sabha elections giving respect to the sentiments of the grassroots workers, who were hurt by some of the recent happenings.
The recent happenings that had hurt the party cadre perhaps were the sly disparaging remarks made by BJP State President K Annamalai against C N Annadurai, after whom the AIADMK is named, and also former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.
By forming a grand alliance, he would be able to sweep not just the 2024 Lok Sabha polls but also the 2026 Assembly elections, Palaniswami said, adding that in the last Parliament elections the AIADMK lost by a small margin of less than 5,000 votes in 10 constituencies. In Chidambaram constituency the margin was just 324 votes, he said.
The DMK government had become unpopular as the prices of essentials had shot up in the last two and a half years, besides an increase in house tax, electricity rates, water charges and so on. He alleged that Stalin was taking the people for a ride by claiming to have fulfilled 95 per cent of the election promises while in reality not even 10 percent of the promises had been implemented.
In the Cauvery dispute, too, he blamed Stalin for his failure to get water from Karnataka despite the opportunities he had in view of his closeness with Congress leaders. The failure to get water had led to the kuruvai paddy crop raised in 3.5 lakh acre already withering away and the rest of the crop too facing water shortage.
On his party MLAs meeting Nirmala Sitharaman, he clarified that they had taken up the cause of the coconut farmers and the meeting was only a follow up of the initiative taken by them as elected people’s representatives.
