Political parties try to woo Rajnikanth

Chennai, Mar 25 (IANS)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday joined political parties seeking Tamil film superstar Rajnikanth's support for the coming parliamentary election.

"The party will approach Rajnikath for his support," said state BJP leader Sukumaran Nambiar, the son of M.N. Nambiar, who played a villain in many Tamil films with M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalitha in the lead roles.

M.G. Ramachandran is considered a political icon while Jayalalitha is the state's chief minister.

Rajnikanth is considered an ardent admirer of Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani and is believed to be close to the state's main opposition DMK leader M. Karunanidhi.

Now that the BJP and the DMK have parted ways, he may have a difficult choice on his hand.

Rajnikanth was unhappy when the BJP allied with the AIADMK in 1997-98. In 1999, he was believed to have been instrumental in getting the DMK to join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Now, the BJP has again joined hands with Jayalalitha's ruling AIADMK for the Lok Sabha poll.

However, Karunanidhi has so far been unable to rope in Rajnikanth to campaign for the DMK. In the 2001 assembly polls, the DMK used a Rajnikanth look-alike to campaign against AIADMK chief Jayalalitha.

Since Jayalalitha came to power in 2001, Rajnikanth has ignored repeated DMK pleas to oppose her in public. He last campaigned for the DMK during the 1996 assembly polls.

Rajnikanth's family originally comes from Gaekwad in Maharashtra. Before stepping into Tamil films, he stayed in Bangalore. He has been accused of favouring Karnataka in Tamil Nadu's long-standing dispute with that state on sharing of Cauvery river water.

Last year, he faced the allegation when film actor Sarath Kumar, a DMK member in the dissolved parliament, led a protest by the Tamil film fraternity against Karnataka on the Cauvery issue.

To show his loyalty to Tamil Nadu, Rajnikanth himself sat on a daylong fast separately and said he believed the interlinking of rivers -- a BJP-supported national project -- was the only solution to the Cauvery dispute.

The BJP candidate for Dharmapuri Lok Sabha seat, P.T. Elangovan, claimed Tuesday that Rajnikanth had promised his fans "would ensure" the party's victory from the seat.

Elangovan hoped that Rajnikanth fans would also extend their support to all the six BJP candidates.

Indo-Asian News Service