A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi harped on the successful coalition formed by the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee two decades ago and said the BJP was open to an alliance with “old friends” in Tamil Nadu, DMK president M.K. Stalin on Friday said Mr. Modi was no Vajpayee. He reiterated that the DMK would never align with the BJP.
Slamming Mr. Modi’s comments on Thursday to his party cadre in a video conference that the BJP’s doors were open to old friends and that the BJP had always followed the path shown by Mr. Vajpayee, Mr. Stalin said “Modi is no Vajpayee and the alliance formed by them in the Centre is not a healthy one like the alliance formed under the late Vajpayee”.
In a statement, Mr. Stalin said it was amusing and ironical that Mr. Modi was comparing himself to Vajpayee.
Modi’s record
“In the last four years, after sowing seeds of hatred through provocative speeches, betraying the social justice system after calling himself a friend of the lower classes, causing immense damage to constitutionally set up institutions, it is ironical that Mr. Modi compares himself to Vajpayee, who the late DMK president M. Karunanidhi had said was a ‘right man in the wrong party’,” Mr. Stalin said.
Recalling the DMK’s part in forming the NDA coalition and the Common Minimum Programme under which the coalition worked, Mr. Stalin said the DMK did not hesitate to pull out of the government when communal voices started rising under that regime.
“Mr. Modi is not in power to protect the multi-faceted nature of the country. Never before under any Prime Minister have Tamil Nadu’s rights been snatched so much. The DMK will never ally with Mr. Modi who believes concepts such as secularism, social justice, federalism, state’s rights, are unwanted terms,” Mr. Stalin said.
In the evening, as part of his ‘Ooratchi Sabhai’ interaction with villagers of Kancheepuram, he questioned why the ruling AIADMK, which swore by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, never organised any memorial meeting for her in the past two years.
“After Karunanidhi’s death, we conducted so many memorial meetings but the AIADMK has done no such thing for Jayalalithaa,” he said.