Chennai: Making a strong pitch before the electorate in Tamil Nadu to vote for the AIADMK-BJP alliance in the April 6 Assembly election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday sought to project the National Democratic Alliance as being in favour of development, while saying that the United Progressive Alliance was for promoting dynasty.
Modi, who campaigned in the temple town of Madurai and Kanniyakumari, both in southern Tamil Nadu, said the NDA believed in holistic infrastructure and industrial development of the country. On the contrary, the Congress-led UPA of which the DMK is a constituent, was ridden with nepotism, he charged. The UPA is for dynasty rule, “for the benefit of their children and their grandchildren," he said.
Without naming DMK youth wing leader Udhayanidhi Stalin, Modi said leaders of the DMK who once rubbed shoulders with former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi were now forced to work with the “crown prince”. In an indirect response to the DMK’s campaign that the AIADMK had pledged “State autonomy” with the Centre, he said the Congress was an undemocratic party which had dismissed elected Governments including those headed by the DMK (1976) and AIADMK (1980).
He also accused the Congress of not respecting local culture. “The Congress had backed the ban on jallikattu. One Congress Minister had called it a barbaric sport. Only the AIADMK and BJP Governments had restored jallikattu,” he said in Madurai.
In Kanniyakumari, which has a good proportion of Christian population, Modi said his party did not believe in differentiating people on the basis of their faiths.
“We are for Indians and not for any particular caste or religion. We rescued the nurses abducted in Iraq. We rescued Rev. Fr. Alexis Premkumar from his abductors of Afghanistan and Rev. Fr. Tom from his abductors of Yemen. We don’t treat people based on their faith or religion,” he declared.
