CHENNAI: Linguistic Minorities Forum of Tamil Nadu, which supported the AIADMK in the 2011 assembly elections, has decided to back the BJP this time.
At a function on Friday, BJP national general secretary in-charge of Tamil Nadu Murlidhar Rao and the party's T-Nagar candidate H Raja welcomed the support. Rao said the BJP manifesto has underlined the importance of Tamil without prejudice to other languages.
"We are fighting for restoration of three-language formula in Tamil Nadu which will give students from other states facilities to study their respective mother tongues," said the forum's chairman CMK Reddy.
He said while the erstwhile DMK government introduced the two-language formula making Tamil compulsory, the AIADMK regime which followed did not bother to restore the three-language formula despite making promises to do so.
The forum representing Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Urdu, Hindi and Marathi speaking people who comprise around 40% of Tamil Nadu's population was formed 15 years ago basically to address issues of shortage of Telugu teachers and textbooks.