DMK will never be part of alliance led by Narendra Modi, M K Stalin says

CHENNAI: The DMK will never be part of an alliance in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the leader, party president M K Stalin said on Friday.

Stalin was reacting to Modi’s statement on Thursday that the BJP-led NDA’s “doors are open to old friends” + and that they could join the alliance as they had done when A B Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. The DMK was part of the NDA when Vajpayee was the leader.

Stalin dismissed the invitation stating that “Modi is not Atal Bihari Vajpayee.”

“In the last four and half years, Modi has been only speaking and has not taken any steps to strengthen India’s integrity. During the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he called himself a friend of backward and SC and ST people but after coming to power, he has buried social justice in the country,” accused Stalin.

Stalin said former DMK chief the late M Karunanidhi had called Vajpayee a right person in a wrong party. “Modi comparing himself with Vajpayee is only a joke. It is nothing but Modi’s campaign strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections,” said Stalin.

“It is only for the sake of boosting the country’s economic growth that Vajpayee wanted a stable government. It was only due to this that the DMK joined the alliance which had a common minimum programme. We did not support the Vajpayee government’s policy which was against the country. We walked out of the alliance once the communalism started to raise its head,” said Stalin.

“It is only after Modi took charge that Tamil Nadu has become powerless. The state is deprived of its rights. Modi does like words like ‘secularism,’ ‘social justice’ and ‘federalism’,” he said.