Union Minister and senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar on Friday sidestepped a question on whether Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami would be the AIADMK-led alliance’s chief ministerial candidate for 2021.
To a pointed question on the Chief Minister candidate, at a press conference in Chennai, the Minister said: “Good question, good answer.” When the question was put again, he said journalists were free to interpret his comments.
State BJP president L. Murugan and a few other leaders have, in the past, said that the BJP high command would decide on the chief ministerial candidate. However, recently, Mr. Murugan, following a controversy, said that Mr. Palaniswami would be the candidate for the top job.
Earlier, Mr. Javadekar said that just like other States, where the BJP made serious inroads, “in Tamil Nadu too, the BJP will show a stellar performance in the Assembly election”.
He said all over the country, the BJP was winning, while the Congress was losing, because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s credible leadership.
Mr. Javadekar said people were with the cause of such leadership and they wanted progress, development, and promises to be fulfilled, not just petty politics. On the farm laws, he said the Modi government was the only one that had been devoted to the cause of the farmers in the all the six years of its governance.
The Minister said that in the last 4-5 years, farmers’ income had doubled where the minimum support price (MSP) is given. “We have made it very clear that MSP, APMCs will stay. But at the same time, farmers have been demanding for the last 40 years, that they should be able to sell to anybody who gives more price. This is the right of the farmers, which is what we have given,” he said.
Earlier, at a rally in Chengalpattu district, Mr. Javadekar said that only farmers from Punjab were protesting against the farm laws and that they were misguided. “Most beneficiaries of the MSP regime were farmers of Punjab. They are misguided. Farmers in other States are not misguided and are not protesting,” he said.
