Adding wind to the ongoing language row in Tamil Nadu, state BJP chief K Annamalai said the three-language policy under the National Education Policy (NEP) is the need of the hour. At a press conference where he launched a signature campaign to support the policy, he said that after the BJP came to power, many trains were named after Tamil icons like after the Sengol Express.

“They (now Chief Minister MK Stalin and DMK) were in alliance from 2006 and 2014, did you name even one train after a Tamil icon? Why did you not start Kashi Tamil Samagam?” he asked.

Asked if “Hindi imposition” would isolate the BJP in the Dravidian heartland, Annamalai said that the Centre naming flagship schemes in Hindi is not intentional and the Tamil Nadu government should popularise their Tamil names. “Giving Hindi names to flagship schemes is better than the (Congress-led) UPA naming schemes after Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi,” he said.

The state-level signature campaign seeks to garner the support of students, parents, and the general public for NEP 2020 amid the opposition of most other political parties in the state, including ruling DMK and the principal Opposition AIADMK, against the three-language policy. The goal of the campaign is to gather one crore signatures and present them to President Droupadi Murmu.

Annamalai dubbed Stalin a “hypocrite” for attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi over Centre’s fund allocation for Sanskrit-Hindi and Tamil and thereby alleging Hindi imposition.

While the BJP claims that Prime Minister Narendra Modi held Tamil in high esteem and that the three-language formula is for the growth of languages of the states, the difference in allocation of funds for Tamil and Sanskrit would make it pretty clear that they are “enemies” of Tamil, Stalin alleged.

Earlier, an all-party meeting presided over by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin passed a resolution requesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to give assurance in the parliament that if delimitation is done, it should be based on the 1971 population census. As per the resolution, “This all-party meeting unanimously strongly opposes Delimitation based on population, which is seen as a big threat to India’s federal structure and Tamil Nadu and other Southern States representation.”