BJP plays the MGR card

M G Ramachandran, better known as MGR, a three-term Tamil Nadu chief minister, is an evergreen hero even though he died in 1987. Framed photographs of him can still be seen in many shops and auto-rickshaws throughout the state. Now, the actor-cum-politician appears to have acquired another fan - the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). At the BJP's public meeting in Chennai, attended by around 400,000 people, the party's state leadership compared MGR to its prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Ahead of Modi's address, the state party's president recalled how Modi also started out poor and, like MGR, rose to his current position. Another senior BJP leader, M Venkaiah Naidu, started his speech by recalling leaders from the state and ended the list with "the great MGR". It is worth noting that the ruling AIADMK has been using MGR's name as a crowd-puller in every election, not least because the current chief minister, J Jayalalithaa, was his protege.