The BJP can “stoop to any level” to win the 2024 general election, Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin said on Sunday, warning ruling party functionaries against making careless remarks that Hindutva proponents can distort to create emotive controversies.
With the AIADMK “faction-ridden and dormant”, Stalin said, the BJP will be trying to grab the main Opposition space by “stoking religious feelings for political ends” — for that is all a party “which has no achievements to show the people” can do.
Stalin, speaking after being unanimously re-elected DMK president for a second term at the party general council here, cautioned the cadre against any complacency.
The BJP’s objective “is to defocus the DMK (from fulfilling the popular mandate)” and to “humiliate” it by creating controversies, and the ruling party must not hand its adversary the opportunity, he said.
Stalin’s comments come against the backdrop of a slew of recent remarks by DMK functionaries on various subjects that have been grist to the BJP’s disinformation mill.
Stalin urged party colleagues to be careful in “every word you utter”, else the Right-wing ecosystem will “dissect and distort your comments and we will be expending our energies only in rebuttals and clarifications”.
Instead, “our performance and implementation of welfare schemes should be the reply to our critics”, Stalin added.
He predicted that the DMK and its allies would win all the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in neighbouring Puducherry in 2024, making the DMK “an important force in Indian politics”.
Stalin praised the “hard work” of party youth wing leader Udhayanidhi Stalin in organising ideology workshops across the state and attracting more youths to the DMK.
MK Stalin with party's newly elected Deputy General Secretary Kanimozhi Karunanidhi
Kanimozhi elevated
Party women’s wing leader and MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi was promoted as one of the DMK’s five deputy general secretaries at the general council meeting, which capped the five-yearly intra-party elections.
Kanimozhi fills the slot vacated by former minister Subbulakshmi Jegadeesan, who recently retired from active politics and resigned her party membership.
Senior party functionaries I. Periyasamy, K. Ponmudi (both state ministers), Nilgiris MP and former telecom minister A. Raja, and MP Andhiyur Selvaraj were re-nominated as deputy general secretaries.
Duraimurugan, state minister and one of the party’s senior-most members, was re-elected DMK general secretary for a second term. Senior MP and former Union minister T.R. Baalu will remain party treasurer.
