'Though we had fielded a candidate in Kolathur, the DMK forced him to withdraw. Since we don’t have a dummy candidate, we have asked our cadre to vote according to their conscience,' BJP spokesperson Balaji said.
Son of DMK chief M Karunanidhi MK Stalin, contesting the Kolathur seat in the April 13 election to Tamil Nadu assembly, is likely to face trouble as BJP has pledged support to his rival AIADMK’s Saidai Duraisamy.
“Though we had fielded a candidate in Kolathur, the DMK forced him to withdraw. Since we don’t have a dummy candidate, we have asked our cadre to vote according to their conscience,” BJP spokesman Balaji told DNA.
Interestingly neither Karunanidhi nor Stalin mentioned BJP during their campaign.
DMK’s campaign strategy is to ask the people not to vote for AIADMK and its leader Jayalalithaa. Karunanidhi, Stalin and other DMK leaders have so far not mentioned anything about RSS, Narendra Modi or LK Advani during their speeches. According to a DMK leader, “BJP is not a force to reckon with in Tamil Nadu.”
However, the election commission statistics show that BJP had polled 2.02% votes in the 2006 assembly election as compared to the DMK’s trusted ally VCK that had to content with just 1.2% votes.
Meanwhile, Dr V Mythreyan, MP and spokesman of AIADMK said he was not aware of any such move by BJP. “We are quite strong in Kolathur. We don’t have any truck with parties other than our alliance partners,” he said.
AIADMK had electoral alliance with BJP in the 1998 Lok Sabha election. The party was a prominent ally of the NDA government headed by AB Vajpayee but the ties deteriorated within a year and Jayalalithaa brought down the government by withdrawing her support.
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