Remaining firm on her desire to win all 40 seats in Tamil Nadu and Puduchery in the next Parliamentary polls to enable her party to play a bigger role at national level, AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Sunday asked her partymen to be united to achieve this feat.
“If my dear siblings (party workers) follow unity in public life and work for the people, they will give us massive victory in all the 40 seats,” she said at a free mass marriage function organised in Chennai by AIADMK.
She insisted that her partymen should start working now to achieve the goal.
Ms. Jayalalithaa, eyeing a prominent national role, had earlier this month exhorted her partymen to strive towards a bigger role at national politics, saying AIADMK would come to a position where it can select the Prime Minister.
She had recently asked them to work towards bagging all 40 Lok Sabha seats (39 in Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in Puduchery) in the next Lok Sabha polls which are due in 2014.
Presiding over the marriage function, she hailed the Indian family system, but rued that nuclear families were on the rise even as more old age homes were coming up.
“60 years back, there were no old age homes as people lived in joint families. But today, the government itself is forced to run such homes,” she said, adding, elders should be taken care considering the hardship they endure in bringing up their children.
She particularly took a dig at persons who settle abroad, saying they not only “forget their father and mother but also their motherland.” This had pushed many seniors to live in old age homes, she added.
