TN will decide next PM, says Jaya at rally

Jayalalithaa and her alliance partners rooted for a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative at the Centre that would give top priority to “ensuring a ceasefire and save the Tamils” in Sri Lanka, reports M R Venkatesh.

AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa added a twist to the ongoing puzzle of whom the Third Front would choose as prime minister if it is in a position to form the next government at the centre.

HT Image

“The verdict in Tamil Nadu will determine who the next prime minister will be,” she said at a massive rally launching the joint campaign in the state along with the Left parties here on Thursday evening.

Most of the speakers at the rally highlighted the “callous indifference” of the Congress and DMK parties and the UPA government towards the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Jayalalithaa and her alliance partners rooted for a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative at the Centre that would give top priority to “ensuring a ceasefire and save the Tamils” in Sri Lanka.

She slammed the DMK and the Congress for doing nothing to ameliorate the sufferings of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
“The DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, who has been crying himself hoarse as the leader of the Tamils, had only been enacting a deceptive drama,” she said.

CPM leader Prakash Karat said the situation in Sri Lanka would have been different if the Prime Minister had spent even one-tenth of the time he devoted to building a strategic alliance with the US for three years to address the “life and death situation” facing the Lankan Tamils.

Karat assailed the UPA government for “failing in all fronts” and said the country’s “foreign policy had got totally derailed”.