At a rally on Monday concluding his Lok Sabha poll campaign in Tamil Nadu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a Tamil-centric pitch as he proposed to set up Thiruvalluvar centres globally, and labelled the Congress and DMK “sinners” over “ceding” Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka.

Modi dubbed the DMK and Congress “anti-national” and said the entire country has now understood the “truth”, that they had given Katchatheevu to another country after “cutting it off” from Tamil Nadu. Not only did they keep “the people of Tamil Nadu in the dark, they told lies to them and committed a sin behind the scenes,” Modi alleged.