Top BJP leaders to campaign in Tamil Nadu

Chennai, Apr 10: Former Prime Minister A B Vajpayee, leader of opposition L K Advani and BJP President Rajnath Singh will campaign for the party in Tamil Nadu for the May eight Assembly polls.

Talking to newspersons here today after releasing the second list of 19 candidates, BJP State Unit President C P Radhakrishnan said the other national leaders of the party including M Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Pramod Mahajan, would undertake intensive campaigning in the State.

Besides, the Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled States, would also campaign in the State, he added.

''The campaign dates of these leaders, will be finalised in the next couple of days,'' he said and claimed that both the DMK-led DPA and the AIADMK-combinewould bite the dust at the hustings.

The achievements of the previous BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre and the ''ineffective functioning'' of the present Congress- led UPA regime, would be the main poll plank of the party, he said.

Claiming that the AIADMK combine, would be defeated because of MDMK General Secretary Vaiko, Mr Radhakrishnan said and referred to Mr Vaiko's remarks during a public meeting when a person asked about receipt of Rs 40 crore from the AIADMK.

''Why are you telling less...say more was Mr Vaiko's cryptic rhetoric,'' the BJP Chief pointed out and alleged this showed that Mr Vaiko had received a minimum of Rs 40 crore from the AIADMK.

He dubbed the AIADMK-MDMK combine as an opportunistic alliance.

He also described as ''fake'' the promises'' given by DMK of providing Rs two a kg rice, free colour TV sets and free cable connections.

Observing that the BJP's prospects would not be affected in the wake of Aranthaangi MLA Arasan joining the DMK, Mr Radhakrishnan clarified that Mr Arasan had not sought a ticket, seeking relection. The BJP, which had released the first list of 139 candidates last week, announced the change of candidates in Trichy (1), Trichy (2) and Chidambaram, fielding Thirumalai, Mathiarasan and Marumalarchi Sreenivasan in palce of A P Senthilkumar, Balaji Sivaraj and V Kannan, respectively.

The BJP, which had decided to contest 183 seats, would release the final list in a day or two, he said.

Following is the second list of candidates with the constituency name in brackets T Udhayakumar (Nagercoil), M R Gandhi (Colachel), Dr Tamilisai (Radhapuram) R Vetrivel (Sattur), A P Prabhakaran (Madurai east), S Surendran (Thiruparankundram), A Sakthivel (Cumbum), V Panneerselvam (Usilampatti), S Iruliah (Thiruvadanai), P Parthiban (Srirangam), D Anbil Ranjendran (Lalgudi), Dr M Sivasubramaniam (Ariyalur), A Sundararajan (Alangudi), Kavignar Kula Kattha Mutthu (Aranthaangi), R Kothandaraman (Kumbakonam), B Muithukumar (Thirunavalur), M S Rajendran (Gingee), K N Annadhurai (Salem-1), V V Veluchamy (Singanallur).

UNI