Chennai: The cordial relationship between the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to have hit a rough patch since BJP national president Amit Shah’s visit to Chennai last week.

While addressing party members on 9 July, Shah’s comments on Tamil Nadu being “the most corrupt state" did not go down well with the regional party. The subsequent income tax department raids on the offices and properties of Nagarajan Seyyadurai, the managing director of SPK and Co. Expressway Pvt. Ltd, also raised eyebrows.

SPK group director Subramaniam Palanisami is a close relative of Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, who also happens to be in charge of the highways portfolio. The company has reportedly bagged several road construction and maintenance contracts in the past few years.

Last month, the opposition, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), had alleged that the CM was favouring the SPK group in awarding contracts, and had filed a complaint with the directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption. “It is an unwritten law that only companies run by these two (Palanisamy and Seyyadurai) should get the highway contracts," DMK leader M.K. Stalin said on Monday.

There were also searches at Christy Friedgram Industry in Namakkal, the monopoly egg supplier under the mid-day meal scheme in government schools. Following the raids, Pon Radhakrishnan, the Union minister of state for finance and shipping, had alleged a ₹ 5,000-crore scam in the procurement of eggs.

AIADMK, however, countered the allegations saying the raids by central government agencies were for non-payment of taxes and, it did not amount to corruption. “It has become a habit for the people at the centre to term everything that happens in Tamil Nadu as corruption," D. Jayakumar, the state minister for fisheries, had said. Besides, he asked Radhakrishnan to stop making “baseless allegations", and warned him that “if required, we can also hit back (at the Union government)".

Subsequently, the AIADMK, which had initially decided to support the BJP’s proposal for simultaneous polls, said that it was against the idea of holding it from 2019, besides opposing the draft bill on setting up of a higher education commission, which would replace the University Grants Commission (UGC). It has expressed its reservations over the dam safety bill.

Analysts also say that the I-T raids will also have other political implications, given that the case related to the disqualification of 18 MLAs close to T.T.V. Dhinakaran was pending before the Madras high court. “These (I-T raids) could be seen as an attempt by the BJP to once again confirm that they have a control over the AIADMK. Though the party has been reacting to the allegations of the BJP against AIADMK, it hasn’t opposed the centre in a strong manner," said A. Marx, a Chennai based political analyst.

Following the searches at properties belonging to the relatives of jailed leader V.K. Sasikala last year, Dhinakaran had also alleged that the BJP was attempting to threaten through “selective I-T raids".

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