Chennai: DMDK founder president and leader of Opposition Vijayakanth on Friday charged the ruling AIADMK with indirectly helping DMK candidate Kanimozhi to win Rajya Sabha polls.
“In this election, the ruling AIADMK showed keen interest in who should be defeated than on who should be elected. The ruling party had initially announced five candidates. But it withdrew one of its candidates to accommodate CPI candidate after DMK announced Kanimozhi’s candidature. Now a question has come up in the minds of people if this was done to indirectly help DMK win?” Vijayakanth said in a statement here.
DMDK leader said the AIADMK could have defeated Kanimozhi with the strength of its MLAs and its alliance partners in the Assembly. “Though the AIADMK and DMK projected themselves as an arch rival, both parties maintain a silence on the wrongs committed by them when they are in power,” he alleged.
DMDK has been passing through a crisis with seven of its MLAs calling on AIADMK supremo and chief minister Jayalalithaa, thus turning rebels. Had the DMDK’s votes remained intact, its candidate A.R. Elangovan would have polled 29 votes with Kanimozhi managing only 32.
Taking on the seven ‘rebel’ MLAs who voted in favour of AIADMK in the election, Vijayakanth charged them with betrayal as they were given a political identity by him. He said by supporting the ruling dispensation, his dissident colleagues “stood exposed” as they had called on Jayalalithaa on the pretext of getting development work done in their respective constituencies.
“People of those constituencies have identified them.The future will teach them (a lesson) for betraying the party and its high command which gave them political identity,” he said. Vijayakanth said he would not be cowed down by the challenges thrown at his party as it was capable of defeating them.
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