Tamil Nadu poll snippets: Star attraction

April 07, 2014 03:56 am | Updated November 27, 2021 06:55 pm IST

On Saturday, the million dollar question whether actor Kushboo will campaign in the elections was answered. The suspicion arose due to the animosity between her and DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin. When Ms. Kushboo hit the campaign trail canvassing for M. Chinnasamy from Karur in Iluppur and surroundings, the DMK cadre heaved a sigh of relief. The party in the absence of major film personalities was feeling little handicapped so far.

- Syed Muthahar Saqaf

Still young at heart

Displaying an agility and alertness beyond his ripe age of 91, the DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi did not fail to humour a gathering in Coimbatore on Saturday. He said, though people quote his age to highlight his long innings in public life, he himself feels shy to mention the same, more so when Rajathi Ammal was around. The comment brought a smile on his companion Rajathi Ammal’s face. He turned nostalgic and quoted from memory the first poem he wrote in his teens in honour of A.T. Pannerselvam when the latter died in an air crash in the Gulf of Oman.

- Karthik Madhavan

What’s in a name?

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, goes the Shakespearean saying. But for voters in Tamil Nadu, it looks like the name alone counts, at least in the Lok Sabha constituency of Sivaganga. The BJP workers campaigning for their candidate H.Raja, found themselves in a piquant situation. They found it extremely difficult to introduce their candidate because, once the name Raja was mentioned, old women, residing in tiny hamlets, questioned them if the person for whom they sought votes was the one accused in the spectrum case.

Taken aback, these workers spent time explaining that their Raja was entirely different. They even told them that such questions could be posed to the Congress candidate and his father, who might be able to tell who the other Raja was.Since similar doubts were raised at several places, the BJP workers were worried that their candidate’s name would play the spoilsport and decided to give their candidate a brand name that would differentiate him from A. Raja. Initially, one of them suggested adding the suffix, ‘ji’, typical of the Sangh Parivar style, to H.Raja’s name, making him ‘Rajaji’. But some othersfeared that since voters were aware of the 2G scam, the suffix would still confuse them further with 2G. Finally they decided to go around seeking votes for ‘Lotus’ Raja.

- T. A. Narasimhan

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