Leaders of various parties and outfits, including Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Vaiko, were on Friday arrested in Tirunelveli when they attempted to proceed to Idinthakarai, the epicentre of protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, to express their solidarity with the locals demanding the scrapping of the Indo-Russian project.
'DMK is taking a wrong image of BJP to the people.'
While Muthuraman is suspected to be a Bharatiya Janata Party worker, Francis is believed to be a Communist Party of India activist, police said.
Will the perceived Narendra Modi wave help the National Democratic Alliance re-enact the 1998 spectacular success in Tamil Nadu when it bagged 30 seats in alliance with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, is the million dollar question on the minds of the Bharatiya Janata Party workers as the party heads into the April 24 Lok Sabha polls armed with a rainbow combine excluding the two Dravidian majors.
Springing a surprise, Vijayakanth-led Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam on Wednesday struck an alliance with the four-party People's Welfare Front for the May 16 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu with the actor-turned-politician being declared as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance.
Stalin owes his victory this time, like in 2019, to the hate-campaign of the local Hindutva forces, which kept haranguing him, and even his dead father, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam leader Vijayakant is inclined to lead a Third Front to contest the April 13 assembly polls with the Left parties and Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to be the likely constituents, DMDK sources said on Thursday
Marumalarchi Dravida Munntera Kazhagam General Secretary Vaiko on Friday said repeated attacks on Indian fishermen, allegedly by the Sri Lankan Navy, has made the livelihood of over one crore fishermen in Tamil Nadu quite uncertain.
Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Vaiko will undertake one-day token fast on April 22 in Chennai in protest against the deportation of slain LTTE chief Prabhakaran's mother.
'Tamil Nadu will never allow the Centre's three-language policy'
MDMK chief Vaiko today charged the UPA Government with helping Sri Lanka by giving arms, which enabled that country's army to capture the "deserted" Killinochi and said the LTTE will win the war ultimately.
Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Vaiko has convened a two-day international seminar on the alleged atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamils in New Delhi on January 10-11, 2009.
With the dates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls announced, election fever has gripped Tamil Nadu with the two main political parties holding parleys with their allies on seat-sharing.
Mounting pressure on the Centre over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi will lead an all-party delegation to Delhi on December 4, seeking the prime minister's intervention for an immediate ceasefire in the island nation.
In a statement in Chennai, he said the MDMK would not have "any issue in sacrificing two of its MP posts over the Sri Lankan Tamil issue." "The Centre should stop all military assistance to the island nation and ask the Lankan Government to continue peace talks (with LTTE) with the help of the Norwegian government to end the ethnic strife and establish a United Nations Office at Colombo," he said.
Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Vaiko, on a tour of the US, met Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, at a function at Chicago. In a brief meeting with Obama on Friday, Vaiko discussed about a book being authored by him on Obama and lauded the Democrat for his dynamism.
After filing the nomination paper, the leaders posed for photographs seeking to put up a united face, a day after MPs from AIADMK, MDMK and SP participated in the voting for electing the successor to A P J Abdul Kalam.
About 300 protestors from parties like MDMK, Indian National League and Tamil National Movement courted arrest along with the two leaders near the Munroe statue in Chennai while trying to go ahead with the rally.
The Tamil Nadu chief minister may have opened a Pandora's Box on the religion front with the appointment of qualified non-Brahmin temple priests, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Part two of an exclusive interview with the MDMK leader.
Party leaders say Vaiko's credibility will take a beating now.
Sri Lanka is seeking naval assistance from India to curb the influx of arms into the island nation.
With Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam joining hands with All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, rumours had it that DMDK will follow suit.
The Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's support to the formation of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka was only moral in nature and "to show the world that Eelam Tamils are not orphans," party leader Vaiko said on Thursday night.
MDMK General Secretary Vaiko meets Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and gets 10 seats more than what he wanted from DMK
The revived factionalism in the AIADMK, if not curbed now, has the potential to split the party vertically, warns N Sathiya Moorthy.
A two-judge bench upheld the validity of section 14 of POTA, which made it mandatory for every person to divulge knowledge about terrorist activities to the police immediately.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has made application to the POTA Review Committee.
The detained MDMK leader wants to attend Parliament.
MDMK sources said Vaiko tentatively plans to leave for the US on June 3 and return on June 20
The outfit was banned in 1991 soon after former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination at Sriperumbudur near Chennai.
It is the third party in Tamil Nadu, after DMK and MDMK, to quit the BJP-led alliance.
The decision comes after the May 7, 2004, instruction of the state government to the public prosecutor to consider withdrawal of the cases.
New Union minister L Murugan's declaration of Kongu Nadu as his native place, instead of Tamil Nadu, may be part of a grand BJP strategy to create new states out of existing ones, particularly those that have anti-BJP governments, mulls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Vaiko had demanded the lifting of the ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Tamil Nadu has around 30 per cent or more of 'swing voters', and it is this segment that will swing the pre-poll alliance decision, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Tamil Nadu chief minister said MDMK's Kannappan was openly supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
