PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss on Thursday said the party’s alliance with the BJP for the Lok Sabha elections has been in existence ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed his office in 2014 and was not formed for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as portrayed by the DMK.
Addressing a public meeting in Vellore in support of NDA candidate, A.C. Shanmugam (Vellore), he said the DMK president and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had questioned how the PMK, a political party that fights for social justice, could join the saffron party that has not openly supported caste census.
Also, the Chief Minister was saying that despite being ideologically different, BJP and PMK had come together only for the Lok Sabha elections. “BJP has never openly said that they are against caste census. Also, our alliance with BJP is not new. Instead, we were together when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister way back in 1998. Our alliance with BJP continues since 2014,” he said.
The PMK president justified his party’s alliance with the BJP as it was fed up with both Dravidian parties - DMK and AIADMK. The party had been seeking 10.5% internal reservation to Vanniyars from the two Dravidian parties when they were in power before the law was struck down by the Supreme Court in March 2022.
The law was passed in urgency by the then AIADMK government days before the announcement of 2021 Assembly elections “Both the Dravidian parties should be discarded. Social justice can be achieved only by the NDA led by the BJP. Our alliance with BJP will continue for 2026 Assembly election in the State,” he said.
Dr. Ramadoss charged that despite being a Minister for Water Resources, Duraimurugan had not initiated any concrete steps to construct a number of check dams across Palar river. In Andhra Pradesh, the river runs only to a distance of 22 km but the Andhra Pradesh government has built 38 check dams within their limits to store water for their farmers whereas in Tamil Nadu, the river runs to a distance of 223 km but only three check dams have been built across the river so far.
