With the Pran Pratishtha of Lord Ram Temple in Ayodhya slated for January 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will undertake a two-day spiritual tour in Tamil Nadu on January 20 and 21.
The Prime Minister, who will arrive in Chennai on Friday evening and inaugurate the Khelo India Youth Games, will stay back at the Raj Bhavan in Chennai. The Tamil Nadu BJP leaders are likely to call on the prime minister to discuss the 2024 election plans.
On Saturday, Modi will visit Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, a revered Vaishnavite shrine at SriRangam in Trichy. Modi will spend at least two hours and offer prayers before all the deities at the temple. He will then take a chopper to Rameshwaram and offer prayers at the Ramanathaswamy Temple. At Rameshwaram, he is expected to take a holy dip in all 22 theerthams (holds tanks) and visit Ramar Paadham, a temple dedicated to Lord Ram’s feet, on Saturday evening. He will stay at the Ramakrishna Ashram in Rameshwaram on Saturday night before leaving to Dhanushkodi by road on Sunday morning.
He will then visit the Sri Kothandaramaswamy Temple in Dhanuskodi, the temple dedicated to Lord Ram, his consort Seetha, brother Lakshman and Hanuman. He will also visit Arisal Munai, the last point of Indian mainland, where the Bay of Bengal meets the Indian Ocean and take a dip in the sea. He will get back to Rameshwaram and is expected to collect water from the holy tanks to take it to Ayodhya. It may be recalled that the holy soil from Rameswaram and Kanchipuram were sent from Tamil Nadu to be used in the bhoomi pujan for construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya in 2020.
Modi’s two-day spiritual visit to Tamil Nadu comes at a time when the BJP is making concerted efforts to increase its political presence in the state. In a state, which is witnessing huge polarisation communally and spiritually, the Prime Minister's spiritual tour is likely to ignite a debate and sympathy among the electorate.
The PM's visit, for the second time since the beginning of 2024, and the meetings with local BJP leaders assumes significance as the party is planning to launch a third front in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls.
Incidentally, Modi’s rich tribute to DMDK founder-leader Captain Vijayakanth on his demise and then his message on social media platform X on MGR’s 107th birthday has sent a political message across the electorate in Tamil Nadu that the BJP respects the state leaders.
Incidentally, in the past ten years Modi has not spoken about Vijayakanth or MGR or any political leader with such deep fervour. The tribute for Vijayakanth and the message remembering MGR as an icon came at a time when the BJP has been trying to project itself as the alternate to the two Dravidian majors and looks to cobble up a third front on its own in the name of NDA.
The AIADMK, which was part of the NDA and the major ally in Tamil Nadu, walked out of the alliance a few months before. AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palanisamy has time and again reiterated that he will not align with the BJP with an intention to bag the minority votes in the state.
Meanwhile the other parties which were part of the NDA earlier - Vijayakanth’s DMDK, now helmed by his wife Premalatha Vijayakanth, Dr S Ramadoss’s PMK, Krishnasamy’s Puthiya Thamilagam and few other fringe parties, are likely to be part of the alliance. While AIADMK is out of the alliance, its offshoots like TTV Dhinakaran’s AMMK and the splinter factions led by VK Sasikala and O Panneerselvam are also likely to align with the NDA. The BJP has already begun its election work in the state and has been concentrating in few constituencies in the west and the south, where it has considerable influence. The BJP is eyeing Sivaganga, Pudukottai, Ramanathapuram, Kanyakumari, Nagercoil in the South, Coimbatore and Nilgiris in the West and also South Chennai.
