Tamil Nadu Assembly Election 2021: PM Modi is campaigning in southern Tamil Nadu today.
Several candidates of MK Stalin's DMK have taken to Twitter, sarcastically urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to campaign for their rivals from the BJP or the AIADMK in their constituencies for the upcoming Tamil Nadu election as they believe this will help them 'widen their winning margin'. The series of similarly-worded tweets by the candidates comes on a day the Prime Minister is campaigning in southern Tamil Nadu for the BJP and its ally, the AIADMK.
Cumbum N Ramakrishna, a DMK candidate from Cumbum, tweeted, "Dear Prime Minister @narendramodi, please campaign in Cumbum constituency. I'm the DMK candidate here and it will help me in widening my winning margin. Thank you sir."
Similarly, senior DMK leader and five-time MLA EV Velu, whose properties were searched last week by Income tax officials while Mr Stalin was campiging for him, too put out a tweet urging PM Modi to campaign for him in Thiruvannamalai.
Selvaraj K, Thadangam P Subramani, Anitha Radhakrishnan, Ambeth Kumar are among other DMK candidates who have taken similar digs on Twitter.
DMK candidate Karthikeya Sivasenapathy urged PM Modi to campaign for AIADMK candidate and Tamil Nadu minister SP Velumani. "...it will be very useful for me if you support him," he tweeted yesterday.
PM Modi is campaigning in Madurai and Kanyakumarifor the BJP candidates. On Thursday, he offered prayers at the famous Meenakshi Amman temple in Madurai. He wore a traditional veshti, shirt and angavastram during his temple visit.
The traditional AIADMK stronghold of southern Tamil Nadu is seeing murmurs against the ruling party from the strong Thevar community, a key vote bank for party, following the state government's 10.5 per cent reservation for the Vanniyar community, whose cause the AIADMK's ally, the PMK, champions. The Thevar community feels that they government has not adequately ensured their interests, following which deputy Chief Minister O Pannerselvam assured the community that the quota for Vanniyars is only temporary and that a similar reservation would be given for other MBCs (most backward communities) too after a caste-based enumeration.
Election to 234 assembly seats in Tamil Nadu will be held on April 6 and the BJP is facing the polls in alliance with the ruling AIADMK.
Today, Stalin's son-in-law was raided by Income Tax officials, with searches in four places in Chennai owned by Sabareesan, his son-in-law, and his associates.