In a massive show of strength one week before the Lok Sabha elections, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader and Chief Minister MK Stalin addressed a rally in Coimbatore with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday, April 12. Thousands of people participated in the rally, extending their support to the INDIA bloc, opposing the Union government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Coimbatore is considered one of the hotspots in Tamil Nadu this election with BJP state chief K Annamalai contesting for the first time.
MK Stalin welcomed Rahul Gandhi at the rally by calling him a ‘brother’ and saying that he will bring a ‘dawn for new India’. Rahul said Stalin was like an elder brother and said, “I don’t refer to any other politician as brother.”
Stalin said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not have anything to showcase in the ten years of his rule and has instead been attacking the DMK with corruption and dynasty politics. He also alleged that Modi was misusing agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax (IT) and others to extort money from business people through electoral bonds. While speaking of BJP’s criticism of the DMK for dynasty politics, Stalin said that it was the people’s choice to elect the dynasty to power.
Rahul took a dig at PM Modi saying that it was not the Modi-led government but “Adani government” in India. “Within a few weeks after I raised the Adani issue in the Lok Sabha, I was thrown out of the Parliament and my house was snatched away from me. I did not want the house. I have lakhs and millions of houses across India, will they not open the door for me? I don’t have a political relationship with you but a loving familial relationship with you,” he said.
Rahul also said that this was no longer a normal election but an ideological battle. “It is a fight between those who want to protect the constitution and democracy in the country and those who are attacking it,” he said.
Rahul doubled down on the importance of the Constitution and said, “The rights of all the people of our country, their histories, their languages, their way of life is protected by the Constitution of India. The Constitution is not an ordinary book. It is the soul, it is the voice of India’s people. And that soul, that voice is attacked by the Prime Minister and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS). India’s institutions belong to all its people. They do not belong to an organisation, they do not belong to the RSS.”
On April 9, PM Modi had attended a rally in Coimbatore to campaign for Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai. The rally marked Modi’s seventh visit to the state within the last two months. DMK has fielded Ganapathy P Rajkumar, who has been the Mayor of Coimbatore city municipality. Other candidates in the fray are AIADMK’s Singai G Ramachandran and NTK’s Kalamani Jeganathan.
Tamil Nadu will be voting on April 19 and the results will be announced on June 4 by the Election Commission of India (ECI).