Muzaffarpur: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Wednesday asserted that the INDIA bloc will win the Bihar assembly polls “if the elections were free and fair”, and described deletion of voters’ names from electoral rolls as “worse than terrorism”.
The DMK president flew down to the eastern state, along with sister and party MP Kanimozhi, where they joined Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav and CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya for the ongoing ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’.
Addressing a rally in Muzaffarpur, the largest town in north Bihar, Stalin delivered his speech in Tamil, which evoked applause from the crowds as it was translated into Hindi.
“For the past one month, the entire nation has been looking keenly at Bihar… the Election Commission has become a remote-controlled puppet,” alleged Stalin, who was impressed with the response to the yatra taken out in protest against the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.
“Is the deletion of names of 65 lakh people (from the draft electoral rolls) not worse than terrorism?” the Tamil Nadu CM asked.
When Rahul Gandhi raised doubts over the fairness of elections held in the past, he was challenged by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to furnish an affidavit, Stalin said.
“But you cannot scare Rahul Gandhi,” the DMK chief said, lauding his alliance partner.
“I have seen Rahul’s camaraderie with Tejashwi, who ride motorcycles together. This friendship is deeper than a run-of-the-mill political partnership. And I am sure that if the elections are free and fair, the BJP-led NDA will be defeated,” he asserted.
“I promise you that after the INDIA bloc wins the assembly polls, I will be back to attend the swearing-in ceremony,” Stalin said.
Bihar is the land where the foundation of this nationwide coalition (INDIA bloc) was laid, and this alliance succeeded in bringing down to 240 the tally of the BJP, which was boasting of winning more than 400 seats in the Lok Sabha polls last year, he said.
The Tamil Nadu CM began his speech by recalling the close friendship between his late father K Karunanidhi and RJD president Lalu Prasad, the father of Tejashwi Yadav, whom he hailed for “tirelessly championing social justice and never getting cowed down by the BJP”.
The DMK president’s reverence for Prasad was also evident in a post on his X handle, immediately after he landed in Bihar.
“Touchdown #Bihar. The land of respected @laluprasadrjd greets me with fire in its eyes, the soil heavy with every stolen vote. Joined my brothers @RahulGandhi, @yadavtejashwi and sister @priyankagandhi as the #voteadhikaryatra turns people’s pain into unstoppable strength,” he wrote.
Gandhi shared a selfie he took with Stalin and other prominent leaders and wrote, “Welcome to Bihar and the #VoterAdhikarYatra my brother Thiru @mkstalin. Your presence here strengthens our fight against Vote Chori in Bihar and the entire country.”
Back in Tamil Nadu, where the DMK’s main rival AIADMK is a BJP ally, the saffron party sought to highlight the troubled equations of the chief minister’s party with migrants from Bihar.
Former Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai shared a few video clips in which supposedly derogatory remarks were made about Biharis and north Indians by Stalin and his cabinet colleagues.
In a sarcastic note, Annamalai wrote that he hoped Stalin “proudly repeats… every one of those insults in front of the very people he and his party members mocked”.
This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
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