AIADMK’s alliance with BJP will continue: O Panneerselvam

Amid the blame game between the AIADMK and BJP leaders over the 2021 assembly election results, former deputy chief minister and AIADMK’s coordinator O Panneerselvam has issued a statement, affirming their faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and stating that their alliance with the saffron party is intact.

“Considering the interests of the Nation and also the welfare of Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK-BJP alliance will continue and there is no second opinion on this,” the statement read.

Panneerselvam’s reaction comes a day after former Tamil Nadu Minister and Villupuram AIADMK north district secretary C Ve Shanmugam said their alliance with the saffron party led to their defeat in the 2021 assembly elections.

Addressing a meeting amid the AIADMK cadres at Vanur, Shanmugam claimed that the party lost a sizeable amount of minority votes due to its alliance with the BJP. “People were prepared, they wanted this government to continue, but the calculations went wrong. People belonging to the minority community don’t have hatred towards our party, they were satisfied with our governance. They differ from BJP’s ideology, we lost their votes which paved way for our defeat,” he said.

Reacting to this, BJP Tamil Nadu General Secretary KT Raghavan said it has to be seen whether the comment of the former minister is his individual view or AIADMK’s view. He added that some of the BJP members, in turn, felt that the election loss was due to some of the decisions taken by the AIADMK during their regime.

Actor Khushbu Sundar, who recently jumped ship from Congress to BJP and contested from the Thousand Lights constituency, took to Twitter and shared a paper cutting of C Ve Shanmugam’s speech and said, “Actually it’s the other way round.”