She is worried over Modi's style of campaigning as he has wooed Tamil Nadu voters with select wording. At a meeting in Nagercoil, where Congress president Sonia Gandhi held a rally a day earlier, Modi said the Tamil Nadu government has failed to protect the interests of fishermen. "Madam blames Amma, Amma blames Madam," he said in a reference to Sonia Gandhi and Jayalalithaa.
Modi wants to emphasise that the BJP should have future interests in Tamil Nadu. That is why he has concentrated on this southern state that has been the bastion of Dravidian politics for several decades. Modi achieved what Rajiv Gandhi failed to do in 1989 - to get a cadre and organisational base for the BJP in Tamil Nadu.
Modi spoke to five important Tamil news TV Channels, and the interviews were telecast live, just a day before his visit. That was a major irritant to Jayalalithaa. Modi has become the talking point among the 60 million Tamils and others in the state. Modi understood the realpolitik of Tamil Nadu. This is for first time that the Congress is not riding on the shoulders of any Dravidian party, and Modi has captured that space.
Modi has changed the image of the BJP - from a brahminical party to a OBC-Dalit alliance, and that has worried not only Jayalalithaa, but also the DMK and the Congress as well.
The DMK cadre is divided with friction within the Karunanidhi family. A majority of the DMK workers are, of course, with M.K. Stalin, Karunanidhi's son whom he has annointed as his successor. But then, Stalin's estranged brother M.K. Alagiri also has the capacity to attract 30 to 40 percent of the party cadre. A section of DMK leaders feels that the threat in the future will be from Narendra Modi and not from Jayalalithaa, and hopes to settle scores with her in March 2016.
