Training his guns on the BJP, RSS and the Sangh Parivar outfits for indulging in communal divide over the lighting of Karthigai Deepam at the Thiruparankundram in Madurai with an eye on the upcoming assembly election, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Friday said what the temple city requires is not religious polarisation but developmental politics.
“Whether the great city Madurai requires politics of development or… politics?” he wrote on his ‘X’ handle. Though the Chief Minister had left what was not needed for Madurai, which is facing an orchestrated campaign of the saffron parivaar over the deepam issue, he left no one in doubt about whom he is referring to.
Reiterating the charge that the BJP-led Modi government had not only failed to fulfill the promises about AIIMS in Madurai but had rejected the demand for metro rail to the temple city and Coimbatore, Stalin said, “Besides AIIMS and Metro Rail network, people of Madurai want new industries and employment.”
The allies of the DMK, including the Congress, VCK of Thol Thirumavalavan, MP, and Left Parties, among others, are solidly behind the government in this sensitive issue. They have condemned the BJP and the Sangh Parivar for patently using religion for political mileage. The parties have pointed out that the judgements of Justice G R Swaminathan in the Deepam case were in contravention of earlier verdicts on the issue by two division benches.
CPI(M) supporters and cadre, led by party state secretary P Shanmugham, staged a demonstration opposite the Madras High Court campus in Chennai, decrying the orders passed by Justice Swaminathan. They were also carrying placards critical of the verdict delivered by him.