The Union Home Minister was supposed to take part in the annual day celebrations of Thuglak magazine on January 14.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah will not be visiting Chennai on January 14. BJP National President JP Nadda will instead visit Tamil Nadu’s capital city. This was supposed to be Amit Shah’s second visit to the state in as many months and was considered crucial as Tamil Nadu gears up for its state assembly polls.
As per reports, Amit Shah was supposed to attend the annual day celebrations of Thuglak magazine, run by RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy, on January 14. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat will be in Chennai around the same time to celebrate Pongal. Amit Shah was also supposed to conduct several meetings with state BJP leaders and discuss election work with the senior leaders in the AIADMK, which is an electoral ally of the BJP in Tamil Nadu. JP Nadda, meanwhile, was scheduled to visit Tamil Nadu the end of December but he couldn’t do so as he tested positive for coronavirus shortly before his planned visit.
Nadda’s visit to Chennai is considered significant since the BJP has not yet accepted Edappadi K Palaniswami as the Chief Ministerial candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Tamil Nadu. The AIADMK has maintained that Edappadi Palaniswami will be the Chief Ministerial candidate, which has not been openly accepted or denied by the BJP leadership. BJP has time and again reiterated that the Chief Ministerial candidate for Tamil Nadu will be announced in due course by the senior leadership of the alliance.
Initially, it seemed like the AIADMK and BJP were falling apart in the alliance. However, in November, when Amit Shah visited Chennai, the AIADMK announced that the party will continue to be in alliance with the national ruling party. Recently, Union minister Prakash Javadekar refused to answer a question on who Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister candidate would be in the upcoming polls, thus indicating that the BJP high command is yet to accept Edappadi K Palaniswami as a unanimous choice for the chair.
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Source: The News Minute