Amit Shah likely to meet Rajnikanth and Alagiri
Minister will declare open Chennai’s fith reservoir and lay the foundation stone for several projects including Phase II of the Metro Rail project; Stalin to start campaigning from Jan. 5
Union Minister of Home and BJP leader, Amit Shah, is likely to meet megastar-politician Rajnikanth and former chief minister M Karunanidhi’s elder son MK Alagiri during his visit to Chennai on Saturday, sources in the BJP said on Friday.
Shah’s official engagements in Chennai include the launching of a number of major projects that the state’s ruling Anna DMK party wants to project as its achievments as it works for the state assembly polls that are due in April/may next year. He is also likely to meet ADMK leaders to discuss alliance plans.
The meeting with Rajnikanth and Alagiri has not been listed as of Friday aternoon, but the ADMK also does not rule it out.
Rajnikanth, who had announced his political entry two years back, had been postponing the launch of his party indefinitely though the conversion of his fans association into a party could be an easy task.
Recent reports suggested that the actor was hesitant because he doesn’t want to be exposed much during pandemic times as he has had a kidney transplant, which means he would not be campaiging. According to BJP sources, Shah wants to explore how best the BJP can utilise Rajnikanth’s popularity. As for Alagiri, the idea is to pit him against his younger brother MK Stalin, the president of the DMK and the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly.
Alagiri was expelled from the party by his own father and had been in the political wilderness ever since. The BJP has offered to welcome him to the party, but Alagiri is not expected to do that since his supporters include many from the minority communities.
Amit Shah’s visit to Chennai tomorrow is primarily intended to work out a strategy to win the state at any rate. He will declare open Thervoy Kandigai, Chennai’s fith reservoir, and also lay the foundation stone for several infrastructure projects including the Phase II of the Chennai Metro Rail project.
The main opposition DMK announced on Friday that party chief MK Stalin will start his campaign from Jan. 5.
DMK general secretary KN Nehru said the campaign for the 2021 assembly elections will be named “Stalin’s Voice Towards Dawn.” “He will travel 15,000km and hold 1,500 meetings and 500 local events, which will reach about a million people,” Nehru said.
Meanwhile on Friday Stalin’s sister and the DMK’S women’s wing chief Kanimozhi visited the family of Karuppasamy (34), a soldier who died ian accident in Ladakh the other day. The party has offered a Rs200,000 support to the family in Kovilpati.
Karuppasamy was critically injured in an accident while transferring ammunition for the army to a vehicle. He is survived by his wife Damayanti (30), two daughters, Kanya (7) and Vaishnavi (5), and a one-year-old son, Pradeepraj. The DMK has offered to bear expenses for the education of the children.
Tamil Nadu had been reporting a dip in COVID-19 cases of late, but it has emerged that the number of tests to detect new cases have been reduced drastically. According to reports in the Tamil media, Chennai was carrying out an average of 11,000 tests a day before the Deepavali festival that fell on November 14, but since then the tests have averaged between 7,000 to 9,000.
A sharp increase is feared ater Deepavali because of crowding of markets by festival shoppers. However, only increased testing can help detect the cases. The Greater Chennai Corporation said on Friday morning that the total number of positive cases was 4,567 which is at a mere two per cent.
“Since the lockdown, Chennai has recorded 2,10,601 cases of COVID-19, of which 2,02,242 have recovered over the months. The recovery rate in the city is at 96 per cent,” it said.
Nearly 3,792 persons have died due to the viral infection. As per records, 479 persons died in Teynampet, 428 casualties were reported in Anna Nagar and 420 deaths were recorded in Kodambakkam.
Indications of crowding was evident in the statement of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation on Friday that 13,24,553 people have travelled during the festival rush. A total of 28,360 special buses were operated during the festival season.