Ahead of the floor test to prove majority in the Assembly, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) president on Monday walked the extra mile to meet his predecessor and DMK president MK Stalin at the latter’s residence, heralding a new political culture in the state.
Actor Rajinikanth met DMK president M K Stalin at his residence in Chennai soon after the party’s disappointing performance in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. The unexpected visit has triggered interest.
Even as the DMK finds it difficult to digest the defeat at the hands of a debutant, Vijay, in the just-concluded assembly election, party president MK Stalin, in a bid to lift the morale of the rank and file of the party pointed out that the loss was of a meagre 3.52 per cent of votes and that the Dravidian major would bounce back to power.
The resignation comes against the backdrop of a major political shift in the state. The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), led by actor-turned-politician Vijay, emerged as the single largest party, securing 107 seats in the 234-member assembly, just 11 short of the majority mark. The DMK, which had been in power, was reduced to 59 seats, marking a sharp decline.
A strong wave of public anger led to the defeat of many senior DMK ministers across Tamil Nadu. The big losses show a clear shift in politics as the party now moves to the Opposition.
Continuing his tirade against the proposed delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies, which threatens to reduce the number of seats for Tamil Nadu and other southern states, Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin on Thursday slammed the exercise as being against the spirit of the Constitution and charged the Modi government with systematically eroding the very foundation of Parliament.
The EC directed that the transferred officials should not be assigned any election-related duties until the completion of the poll process.
Sounding a warning over the impending delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin described it as a dangerous move that would place the rights of the southern states at the stake and asked whether the country is sliding into a dictatorship.
With the CBSE-mandated three-language formula turning into a convenient punching bag in poll-bound Tamil Nadu, which has been following the two-language formula for decades, Chief Minister MK Stalin on Sunday challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to campaign in the Dravidian heartland on the language issue.
While Stalin accused the Centre of attempting to impose Hindi under the guise of education reforms, Pradhan hit back, saying that the Tamil Nadu CM was pushing "fabricated narrative" to hide his political failures.
