assembly-elections

Updated: Oct 18, 2019 23:54 IST

Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar is winning the internet with his Tamil, spoken in an interview by a Tamil TV channel telecast on Thursday.

Khattar replied in Tamil to queries put up in English by Thanthi TV journalist. “Meendum thamarai malarum (The lotus will bloom again)”, was one of the statements Khattar made in Tamil. He also responded to at least two queries in English.

While Khattar left many in the party surprised, his media adviser Amit Arya said the chief minister learnt Tamil from an institute via correspondence in 1979, a year before he became RSS ``pracharak’’.

``The chief minister is an ardent lover of all languages and makes it a point to learn at least the basics of the language and the culture of a state before visiting ,’’ Arya said and added that he had also taken lessons in Russian and Japanese before visiting Russia and Japan recently.

Khattar also used the opportunity during the interview on Tamil TV channel to ask for votes from Tamil community living in Haryana.

This is not the first time that Khattar has publicly spoken in Tamil. He had surprised a lot of people by greeting them in Tamil at a function organized in Chandigarh on Pongal.

A BJP youth wing leader from Tamil Nadu, SG Suryah claimed Tamilians found Khattar’s address better than that of DMK President MK Stalin’s. Suryah also criticized the DMK for not praising Khattar’s five minute address in Tamil because he was from the BJP.