Stalin whips up nostalgia during campaign

He campaigns in Kulithalai where Karunanidhi contested in 1957

RAISING THE PITCH:DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin and party candidate Mahesh Poyyamozhi addressing a crowd at Tiruverumbur in Tiruchi on Monday.— PHOTO: M. SRINATH

It was 10.45 a.m. and already blazing. The enthusiastic crowd was waiting for the arrival of DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin at Kulithalai, from where the electoral journey of his father M. Karunanidhi began in 1957. The sizeable crowd roared when Mr. Stalin emerged on the stage near the bus stand.

“No DMK member can forget the relationship between Thalaivar Kalaignar (Mr. Karunanidhi) and Kulithalai constituency that elected him to the State Assembly for the first time. Our leader still remembers the electioneering that he carried out in 1957 by staying in the house of late Porselvi,” Mr. Stalin recalls before launching a tirade against Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.

It was the foremost duty of elected representatives to meet the people by various means so as to understand their grievances and problems of the people. He had been meeting the people irrespective of whether the DMK was in power or not. But Ms. Jayalalithaa, who has been in power for the last five years, had never visited Kulithalai and most parts of the State.

Terming the AIADMK government as the most corrupt in the country, Mr. Stalin said most Ministers, including V. Senthil Balaji, who was removed from the Cabinet recently, had been facing serious corruption charges. If the DMK was voted back to power, it would bring Lokayukta to check corruption.

After a brief stop over in Tiruchi, Mr. Stalin resumed his campaign at Woraiyur in the Tiruchi West constituency in support of party candidate K.N. Nehru and then at Tiruverumbur for Mahesh Poyyamozhi, a third generation politician from the family of late DMK leader Anbil Dharmalingam.

Mr. Stalin tried to connect with the voters by posing questions. Recollecting the ongoing trial of disproportionate wealth case against Jayalalithaa in the Supreme Court, he asserted that she could not escape through the loopholes in law. The Karnataka sessions court judgment that found her guilty in the case would be upheld in the Supreme Court, he said.

Maintaining that the State was reeling under severe power cut, Mr. Stalin said the Government had been manipulating the power situation by buying power at abnormal rate from the private players. The AIADMK government had scrapped the 1,320 MW thermal power project at Udangudi with ulterior motive. The move had not only affected the fortunes of BHEL but also deepened the power crisis in the State, he charged.