Naam Tamilar Katchi co-ordinator Seeman on Saturday reiterated the party’s commitment to contesting alone in the upcoming Lok Sabha 2024 elections and said the party wants to be “the number 1 party in Tamil Nadu and not one of the many parties in Tamil Nadu” at the party’s general body meeting held here in Chennai.
The party has steadily grown in Tamil Nadu’s electoral politics: from getting a vote share of around 1% in the 2016 State Assembly election, the party polled 3.9% of the votes in 2019 Lok Sabha elections and cornered around 6.9% in the 2021 Assembly election.
Speaking at the meeting, Mr. Seeman rejected the notion that contesting the elections without supporting a Prime Minister candidate is a disadvantage.
“They ask me, ‘Who is your Prime Ministererial candidate?’ Tell me one good thing that has happened to Tamils in the 10 years of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure? It is not important whether NTK can win or not. The question to be asked is, ‘Is NTK necessary in today’s Tamil Nadu?’ The 2024 and 2026 elections are most important for the Tamils in Tamil Nadu,” he said.
Mr. Seeman also made some politically interesting statements couched as slogans. He said: “Why should we say Hindi should be abolished? We must say Tamil should live long. It is not our job to abolish some one else’s mother tongue; it is our duty to safeguard our mother tongue, Tamil. Abolishing Dravidam is not our ideology; but Tamil nationalism should thrive and win is our ideology. Our dream is not to be one of the parties, but to be number 1 party in Tamil Nadu.”
He further strongly criticised the ruling DMK and said that the party in power thinks that the whole of Tamil Nadu is their property. Rueing the lack of work done to strengthen the party at the grassroots, Mr. Seeman said, “I had travelled for 130 days and appointed one person for one Assembly constituency, redesignating it as one party district. I tried to divide work load to make it easier for all of you, but you all started complaining that I had taken one Assembly constituency away from you.”
He said that the party was fighting against caste, religion, alcohol, money and food offered by the established parties but appeared to rule out any alliance in the next two elections.
“We cannot form an alliance with anyone because we have come here to be an alternative. If we form an alliance, our vote bank will fall from 7% to 0.5%,” he said, and claimed that the late DMDK founder Vijayakant squandered away his vote bank by forming an alliance.
