Nitin Gadkari and Muralidhar Rao to attend memorial meeting of M Karunanidhi

New Delhi, Aug 27: Union transport and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari and Bharatiya Janata Party national general secretary Muralidhar Rao will represent the party at the memorial meeting organised for the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu and former president of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) M Karunanidhi. Speculation was rife that Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah would be attending the memorial of the DMK leader scheduled for August 30, 2018.

President of the Tamil Nadu unit of Bharatiya Janata Party Tamilisai Soundararajan said that minister for shipping and transport and former national president of the party Nitin Gadkari and present general secretary Muralidhar Rao would be attending the memorial meeting. It is expected that his memorial will see the participation of top political leaders from across the country.

If sources are to be believed then former Prime Minister and Janata Dal (Secular) leader H D Deve Gowda, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and Congress leader in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, Andhra Pradesh chief ministers N Chandrababu Naidu, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPM) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury are some of the leaders who are expected to attend the memorial.

News reports were doing that BJP president Amit Shah might attend the memorial meeting of the DMK leader setting off the speculation of political realignments ahead of Lok Sabha elections in 2019. However, the DMK has been very critical to the BJP on various issues in the recent times, including issues related to Cauvery and NEET. It had even protested the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April to Tamil Nadu, in the backdrop of the Cauvery issue.