Stalin says he opposes Modi but welcomes him to T.N.: Palaniswami
Singai G. Ramachandran told mediapersons that he would move the court. He claimed that the DEO had uploaded the new affidavit after he had come to submit the complaint.
Mocking Mr. Annamalai, DMK incharge of Coimbatore constituency and Minister for Industries T.R.B. Rajaa told The Hindu that this showed how much of an educated person he (Mr. Annamalai) is. “He did not even know how to file the nomination. This shows the extremely poor quality of the candidates of the BJP,” Mr. Rajaa said.
In Theni constituency, though Mr. Dhinakaran had submitted two sets of nomination on Wednesday, it was said they were uploaded in the portal only by Thursday forenoon, resulting in objection by representatives of other political parties. District Election Officer R.V. Shajeevana withheld the nomination briefly till the issues were resolved.
Later, the NDA nominee’s candidature was accepted. In Tirunelveli, the nomination papers filed by a rebel candidate from the Congress was rejected for want of FormB. Barring the tense moments in Coimbatore and Theni, the nomination papers filed in other constituencies were accepted without any issue.
After the scrutiny of 1,749 nominations received from 1,403 candidates in all 39 Lok Sabha constituencies, 1,085 were declared valid and 664 were rejected. In the Vilavancode Assembly constituency, of the 22 nomination received from 18 candidates, 14 were accepted.
Withdrawal deadline
Candidates would be allowed to withdraw their nominations by Saturday.
The total number of candidates in the fray in each of the Lok Sabha constituencies across Tamil Nadu, and Vilavancode, would be known by Saturday evening.
AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Thursday said that the DMK and its president, and Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin were “doublefaced”. “They say they oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but welcome him to Tamil Nadu. They even used white umbrellas to welcome him,” he said at a meeting held in Madurai as part of his campaign for the Lok Sabha election.
Canvassing votes for the party’s candidate for the Madurai Lok Sabha constituency, P. Saravanan, he pointed out that former Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekar Rao, who opposed Mr. Modi, did not receive the Prime Minister when he had come to attend programmes in the State.
However, the situation was different in Tamil Nadu, he said, adding that the DMK was earlier in an alliance with the BJP (in 1999) and shared power at the Centre during the Con
AIADMK leader Edappadi K. Palaniswami at an election campaign meeting in Madurai on Thursday.
gress government.
“We have moved away from the BJP,” he said. According to him, the DMK did not want to work for the people and was only hungry for power. The DMK family wants to be in power. They have no intention to work for the welfare of people, he said, and questioned whether the party had any ideology.
Taking a dig at DMK
leader and Sports Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, Mr. Palaniswami said that the former keeps talking about the unfinished AIIMS project in Madurai.
“The AIADMK was instrumental in getting the project to Tamil Nadu. What have you done for the project. Instead of showing the [AIIMS] brick in public, you could have done that in Parliament to exert pressure on the
Centre. Your alliance had 38 MPs,” he said.
He said that Mr. Stalin had not fulfilled even 10% of the poll promises. “They keep talking about the abolition of the National EligibilitycumEntrance Test (NEET). But it was the Congress and the DMK that introduced the test. Now they are making false promises,” he added.
During the DMK rule, all departments were riddled with corruption, law and order had failed, drug abuse was on the rise, and the State’s debt burden had burgeoned, Mr. Palaniswami said, adding: “For every scheme you announce, you set up a panel. As many as 52 panels have been set up so far. There are IAS officers for departments. So what is the need for panels?,” Mr. Palaniswami asked.
On the contrary, the State had witnessed development under the erstwhile AIADMK regime, Mr. Palaniswami said, adding that the AIADMK alliance would sweep the Lok Sabha election in the State.
Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president K. Selvaperunthagai on Thursday questioned the PMK’s alliance with the BJP.
“After the Supreme Court struck down the law granting a 10.5% quota to the Vanniyar community within the MBC reservation, the PMK has been demanding a caste census. How can it align with the BJP, which is against a caste census and has been silent on the issue,” he asked.
Addressing journalists at the TNCC headquarters, Satyamurthi Bhavan, in Chennai, Mr. Selvaperunthagai said the PMK was a party founded on the principles of caste reservation and caste census, but it was going against those objectives as well as social justice.
‘Unacceptable’
He said Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s remarks that she had decided against contesting in the Lok Sabha election for lack of “money” were not acceptable. The BJP asked L. Murugan, who has a fiveyear term in the Rajya Sabha, to contest in the Nilgiris. It asked Tamilisai Soundararajan to resign as the Governor of Telangana and the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry and contest from South Chennai.
“Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar hail from Tamil Nadu. Why are they not made to contest from Tamil Nadu and seek votes. Why is the yardstick different for Ms. Tamilisai and Mr. Murugan? The BJP should explain this. Where is the social justice,” he asked.