Chennai: Launching a broadside against regional parties as having lost relevance and turning into family-owned fiefdoms, BJP president J P Nadda on Friday said they have given up regional aspirations and the DMK in Tamil Nadu is no different.
There was a huge applause from the audience when he mentioned Tamil Nadu while listing the political dynasties from the Abdullahs of Kashmir to Mulayam-Akhilesh Yadav of Uttar Pradesh, Lalu-Tejaswi Yadav of Bihar, Chautalas of Haryana and Thackerays of Maharashtra to Mamata-Abhishek Banerjee of West Bengal, KCR family in Telangana and Badals of SAD in Punjab.
“The congress was uprooted in Tamil Nadu because it could not understand regional aspirations. And regional regional parties came into existence. Now regional parties, all regional parties, are converted into family dynastic parties. There are no regional parties, no regional aspirations. They are there only for their daughters and sons,” the saffron leader charged.
Then, the ministerial induction of Udhayanidhi Stalin, son of Chief Minister MK Stalin and grandson of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, came in for ridicule to drive home the point that the DMK is a family-run party. “The family party will not take care of the crores of Tamilians. He will take care of his only dear son. And you see, he has been promoted as a minister. It is a dynastic party,” he said, reiterating his earlier charge that the DMK stands for – Dynasty, Money Laundering and Katta Panchayat (extra Judicial settlement).
“All unscientific dynastic parties are going to shrink and it's only the BJP which is going to expand. Indian politics is not made for families. Political support is given to a cause, to an ideology, to a reason and to a logic and for that logic, the BJP stands with the people of India and with the people of Tamil Nadu,” Nadda claimed, adding that the 'lotus' is the future. Nadda's earlier criticism of the DMK being a family-owned enterprise has elicited a strong rebuttal from the ruling DMK, with the party paper, 'Murasoli,' listing the various political dynasties in the BJP and wards with a political lineage. This time too, the Dravidian major might be expected to join issue with the BJP on this issue.
Significantly, Nadda's visit comes close on the heels of the saffron party and its ally, the principal opposition AIADMK led by former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, were engaged in a war of words over poaching of functionaries. Though it had turned out to be a storm in a tea cup, it indicated that all is not well in the alliance.
