The parties coming together against the Bharatiya Janata Party will shrink and the BJP will expand based on ideology and cadre support, said party’s national president J P Nadda on Friday while addressing a public meeting in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri.
The development comes a week after opposition leaders had gathered for Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin’s 70th birthday and launched a campaign “to defeat the national hegemon.”
The BJP chief was in the state to inaugurate 10 district party offices in Krishnagiri and the remaining in the state in Dharmapuri, Pudukottai, Namakkal, Villupuram, Trichy, Theni, Thiruvallur, Virudhunagar and Thoothukudi via video conference.
Nadda said the BJP was no longer fighting the Congress but against dynastic politics. He listed political parties of fathers and their children from Jammu and Kashmir to Bihar, Haryana, Telangana. While speaking on Maharashtra, Nadda forgot the name of Uddhav Thackeray’s son Aditya Thackeray. “These regional parties have all been reduced to dynastic family parties. The real party has gone to Shinde ji,” Nadda said.
Coming to Tamil Nadu, Nadda recalled that when he was in the southern state in September 2022, he had said that the ruling DMK stands for Dynasty, Money Swindling and Katta Panchayat. “And I said this family party will not take care of crores of Tamilians and he will only take care of his dear son. And you see. I came to know that Udhayanidhi has been promoted as minister. Whatever I said has been reiterated,” Nadda said.
{{/usCountry}}Coming to Tamil Nadu, Nadda recalled that when he was in the southern state in September 2022, he had said that the ruling DMK stands for Dynasty, Money Swindling and Katta Panchayat. “And I said this family party will not take care of crores of Tamilians and he will only take care of his dear son. And you see. I came to know that Udhayanidhi has been promoted as minister. Whatever I said has been reiterated,” Nadda said.
{{/usCountry}}“And now I say, all unscientific dynastic parties that are against BJP are going to shrink and it is only BJP which is going to expand,” Nadda said. “I’m very confident that the coming times are for the BJP, and for kamal (lotus).”
On March 1, opposition party leaders –Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah, Samajwadi Party’ Akhilesh Yadav and Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Tejasvi Yadav -- had gathered in Chennai and committed to fighting together to defeat the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Stalin had then said that talks of a ‘third front’ are ‘pointless’ and parties opposed to the BJP must shed their differences and fight together which was accepted by the leaders on the stage.
On March 9, Stalin accused the BJP of spreading rumours and fake news that migrant workers especially from Bihar were being attacked in Tamil Nadu. “You can understand the plot behind the fake news spreaders if you noticed that these were done the very next day after I spoke about the need for a united national-level alliance against the BJP,” Stalin said.
Nadda’s visit also comes at a time when BJP’s ally AIADMK leading the NDA alliance in Tamil Nadu faced a rout in the Erode east by-poll in which DMK’s alliance Congress’ EVKS Elangovan won. Following this, BJP unit here and the state president K Annamalai were left embarrassed when the party’s IT-wing chief CTR Nirmal Kumar quit on March 5 to join the Edappadi Palaniswami-led AIADMK. In the next few days, more office bearers crossed over to the ally blaming Annamalai’s style of functioning. The AIADMK tried to play the rift down on Thursday saying there is no “trouble” in their alliance.
Nadda did not touch on these issues but he urged party cadres to work to ensure that BJP becomes the voice of Tamil Nadu. “I salute the workers of Tamil Nadu for their courage, commitment and conviction,” the BJP national chief said”. In the coming times, because of your hard work lotus is going to blossom in Tamil Nadu. You should not worry. We are the only ideologically and cadre-based party. We have got a mass following. We have got it consistently.”