CHENNAI: A day after DMK president M K Stalin held a ‘vel’ (spear) and posed for shutterbugs at a makkal grama sabha meeting at Tiruttani, his political rivals AIADMK and BJP took him head on, mocking him for his “brave attempt”.
While political circles see it as an attempt by Stalin to erase the “anti-Hindu” image of the rationalist DMK, the Dravidian party leader came in for ridicule by chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and BJP state president L Murugan. “Today you all would have seen a person holding a ‘Vel’ in his hand. He is Stalin. He has started acting now, while the story, dialogue and direction is by Prashant Kishor (DMK’s poll strategist for the assembly election). God will bless only those who offer true bhakti and not those who act. If you act, keeping votes in mind, then even God will act in a way so as to defeat you and he will only support the AIADMK,” Palaniswami said, after offering prayers at the Puliyakulam Vinayagar temple in Coimbatore.
Murugan went a step further. “Stalin ridiculed me for undertaking the ‘Vetrivel yatra’ and attacked me for doing politics with religion. In just about a month see the change that Lord Muruga has brought upon Stalin, for whom God never existed. He has got Stalin to hold a ‘Vel’ and that too from the same town (Tiruttani) from where I started the Vetrivel yatra,” Murugan said.
But DMK leaders S Durai Murugan and party Rajya Sabha MP R S Bharathi were quick to try to deflect the barbs. “Stalin has taken the ‘vel’ in his hand only to perform ‘Soorasamharam’ (Lord Muruga destroying Asura Sooran) of AIADMK,” DMK general secretary Durai Murugan said at Vellore. "Arupadai Veedu Murugan will bless DMK. Only BJP's L Murugan will bless AIADMK," Bharathi said.
(With input from
A Subburaj)