Stalin kickstarts DMK campaign in Gongu belt, avoids mention of spectrum scam, Raja

Kick-starting the ruling DMK's campaign in western Tamil Nadu ahead of the 2011 assembly polls, the deputy chief minister MK Stalin said he had no doubts' that his party would return to power after the elections. "As expected by his party cadres and feared by the opposition, chief minister M Karunanidhi would head the state government for the sixth time," he thundered at a public meeting in Pollachi. For the DMK, western Tamil Nadu is its Achilles heel with the party drawing a blank in Pollachi, Coimbatore, Tirupur and Erode constituencies in the 2009 Parliamentary elections.

The deputy chief minister chose to harp on the "list of achievements" of the DMK, rather than just stridently attack the opposition. The DMK had not only kept the promises in its election manifesto of the 2006 assembly election, but had "gone beyond the promises" and fulfilled the dreams and expectations of the people of Tamil Nadu. Stalin listed out the benefits the ruling DMK had handed out to farmers - from the waiver of cooperative bank loans to free motors for agricultural pumpsets. Even AIADMK leaders had benefited due to the waiver, the deputy chief minister said. "Can the AIADMK functionaries deny it?" he asked, amid jubilant cheers from the crowd. He carefully avoided any mention of the spectrum scam that forced his party's Union Telecom Minister A Raja to quit nor about the continuance of alliance with the Congress.

"There is no party in India which wins like us and there is also none that learns from losses the way we do. Every loss for has been a stepping stone," Stalin said, recalling the long history of the DMK since its launch and its first time it came to power in 1967.

Posters hailing Stalin as the next chief minister lined the roads leading to Pollachi. Earlier in the day, Stalin called on the bereaved parents of the two school children - Muskan Jain and Hrithik Jain - who were kidnapped and

killed by a cab driver recently. He assured the family members that the government would take all steps to ensure that such incidents do not recur. He also presided over a mass marriage of 99 couples organised by the party's Coimbatore unit.