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AIADMK tries to mollify BJP after ex-minister blames ally for losing Tamil Nadu
In a joint statement, the AIADMK’s joint leadership O Panneerselvam and former chief minister Edappadi Palaniswami said the alliance formed ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections will continue.
Chennai: A video clip of former minister CV Shunmugam’s speech at an event threatened to sour the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) relationship with the Bharatiya Janata Party, forcing the AIADMK’s joint leadership to issue a joint statement asserting that there were no two opinions in the party about the AIADMK-BJP alliance.
In the video clip, the AIADMK’s former law minister is heard blaming the BJP for the Tamil Nadu election results.
“Since we had an alliance with BJP, we entirely lost the minority votes...The most important reason for loss is our alliance with the BJP. Minorities don’t have any issues with our party and governance. But due to ideological differences they have with the BJP, they didn’t vote for us,” said Shunmugam who lost his seat in Villupuram.to the DMK’s R Lakshmanan by a margin of 22,291 votes.
His party, the AIADMK, won just 66 seats in the election, less than half of the 133 seats won by the rival Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK, while the BJP netted four seats. The combined alliance with other regional parties won a total of 75 of the assembly’s 234 seats.
The video clip upset many BJP leaders.
“Even some of our cadre think that we lost in a few places because we allied with the AIADMK and due to certain decisions they took while they were governing in the last four years,” said BJP’s general secretary KT Raghavan said, asserting that minorities across the country did vote for the party.
“But we have to see if CV Shunmugam’s statement is the party’s opinion.”
BJP’s Khushbu Sundar shared a Tamil newspaper report of his speech and tweeted, “Actually it’s the other way around.”
The AIADMK tried to mollify the BJP, underlining that Shunmugam’s statement wasn’t a formal statement. “It was an internal party meeting. Several party members can share their opinions. That’s off-the-record,” AIADMK’s former minister and spokesperson D Jayakumar said. “He spoke among the party cadre internally so I cannot give my opinion on his statement.”
AIADMK’s coordinator and deputy opposition leader O Panneerselvam went into damage control mode and first tweeted a statement that the AIADMK has full faith in the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “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,” he said.
Later, Panneerselvam and former chief minister Edappadi Palaniswami issued a joint statement to underline that there were no two opinions in the AIADMK about its pre-poll alliances. Without naming the BJP, the statement by the AIADMK’s joint leadership said the alliance formed ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections will continue.
