Chennai: Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin on Sunday urged Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) workers to ensure their winning streak was kept up in the local body elections, to be held on February 19. He also hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party saying the party was trying to incite communal tension in the state.
Stalin’s letter to the party cadre comes amid the ongoing controversy over a 17-year-old girl who died by suicide in Thanjavur allegedly due to religious conversion – an issue under investigation.
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In his letter, Stalin told the workers to remind people about Tamil Nadu’s unique quality of not allowing sectarian politics. “BJP is showing an urgency to sow the seeds of religious hatred and to incite riots among Tamil Nadu’s people who are living peacefully and harmoniously. Expose their politics,” he wrote.
The DMK chief asked cadres to work with gusto for the urban local body polls by reaching out to the people on the party-led government’s good governance, achievements and welfare initiatives despite financial burden faced by the state government.
The urban civic polls for 12,838 posts in corporations, municipalities and town panchayats are scheduled to be held on February 19 in a single phase. The counting of votes would be taken up on February 22.
{{/usCountry}}The urban civic polls for 12,838 posts in corporations, municipalities and town panchayats are scheduled to be held on February 19 in a single phase. The counting of votes would be taken up on February 22.
{{/usCountry}}He said that the AIADMK’s ten-year-rule was filled with struggle and accused the principal opposition party of spreading lies each day. “Tell people that the two parties (BJP and AIADMK) are against the interests of the people and have formed an alliance to destroy Tamil Nadu.”
After winning the assembly elections and forming the government in May, the DMK also swept the rural body polls in nine newly carved districts in Tamil Nadu. The February 19 polls will be a referendum on the Stalin-led 8-month old government. “The activities of the DMK government are based on the ‘Dravidian Model’ of social justice, self-respect, caste-based religious harmony and integrated development. This will be a testament to us in the urban local body elections,” Stalin said in his letter.
Meanwhile, BJP leaders in Tamil Nadu led by state president K Annamalai visited the deceased child’s family in Ariyalur district on Sunday. She was studying in class 12 in a Christian residential school in Thanjavur. Following the visit Annamalai spoke to reporters in Ariyalur blaming the DMK-led government and the intelligence department. “We are asking for justice only against individuals belonging to a particular community who had done wrong. That’s all.” Annamalai said. He hit out at Stalin’s statement saying that it was the DMK which indulged in politics when a Dalit student died by suicide after failing the NEET in 2017.
He said that DMK’s ministers and the investigating police were making irresponsible statements while the Thanjavur case is in the Madurai bench of the Madras high court and reiterated their demand for a CBI probe. “BJP is fighting for justice for this child’s justice based on her video, statements from her parents and villagers. If this issue has become a national-issue now it is due to the incompetence of the intelligence department,” Annamalai a former IPS officer of the Karnataka cadre said. “According to me, a big charge is that if they even gave a true briefing to the chief minister.”
(With PTI inputs)