PM’s stand on Jayalalithaa will set the tone for party

Will he or won’t he take on Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa with whom he is known to enjoy a good rapport Will he go out of his way to dispel the confusion among his Cabinet colleagues who speak in conflicting voices on Jaya being inaccessible Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the most watched person when he campaigns in Tamil Nadu in early May for the saffron party even as the people out here wait for the answers to the leading political questions.

BJP chief Amit Shah went hammer and tongs in criticising the ruling AIADMK at an election rally in Tiruchy on April 13, calling it the “most corrupt government in India”. If Mr Modi chooses to criticise Ms Jayalalithaa, then it would signify a no-holds barred battle against the AIADMK in the TN Assembly polls. His speech during his visit to the state either on May 6 or 8 will be keenly watched by his party members too as they are perplexed over the sudden barrage of criticism by a couple of Union ministers in Piyush Goyal and Prakash Javadekar who claimed Ms Jayalalithaa was inaccessible even as there was prompt rebuttal by their senior colleagues in M. Venkaiah Naidu and Nirmala Sitharaman.

Hitherto, only state president Tamilisai Soundararajan has been vociferous in criticising Ms Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK. Post the December 2015 deluge, the BJP Central ministers’ team, which visited the flood affected areas, refrained from faulting the CM while all other political parties brazenly blamed her for the flooding of Chennai.

During his election campaign in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, while addressing the “Chennaiyil Modi” rally (at Vandalur), Mr Modi was silent on the AIADMK though he ridiculed former Union minister P. Chidambaram as “recounting minister”. He hit out at Mr Chidambaram saying, “You are here because of Harvard. I am here because of my hard work.”

He had then visited the state capital for the first time as PM to launch the National Handloom Day celebrations to demonstrate that his government was dynamic and that he had brought his ministers and officials to Chennai on a mission. He called on Ms Jayalalithaa at her Poes Garden residence and the AIADMK supremo hosted a lunch for him. During his February visit to Coimbatore, Mr Modi did not touch upon Tamil Nadu politics. His May visit is certain to be different.