It is victory for anyone who has PM’s backing, says BJP TN president

MADURAI: Anyone who has Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s support is ensured victory, said BJP state president L Murugan on Tuesday. The BJP leader was referring to Modi holding up the hands of chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam at an event in Chennai on Sunday.

The gesture was seemingly an affirmation of the AIADMK-BJP alliance in TN. The victory would mean that the BJP would have representatives in double digits in the next TN polls, Murugan told reporters in Madurai.

He reiterated that a grand reception would be organsied to welcome the PM when he visited Coimbatore on February 25. Defence minister Rajnath Singh is scheduled to visit Salem on February 21. The BJP, he said, was preparing for the election like one of its most important polls, he said.

Asked if the BJP was sidelining OPS considering the one-on-one meeting between the PM and the CM on Sunday, Murugan said, “You saw what happened on stage.”

He was referring to the PM holding up the hands of

EPS

and OPS. Murugan said the government was taking steps to bring down the fuel price. He evaded questions on activists being arrested in connection with the farmers’ protest.

The BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit has formed the state election manifesto Committee . It has 34 different groups and each has been assigned a specific task. State president L Murugan would be chairman of the committee, vice-president of the party K Annamalai would be the convenor of the NDA coordination. tnn

It would also have four members, including state general secretary KT Raghavan and Karu Nagarajan, who would be part of the election management committee.

Apart from this, it would have different teams with specific roles. The party has tasked former national secretary H Raja and state vice-president V P Duraisamy to prepare the manifesto of the party, while it handed over the responsibility of carrying out the virtual campaigns to state IT cell president C T R Nirmal Kumar. Several other senior party functionaries have also been roped in and assigned different tasks.