The MIC president has admitted that his party is "struggling" to deliver votes to the BN in the coming general election.

NONE G Palanivel blamed the division among the Indian community for the party finding it hard to produce results for BN, where of the 900,000 Indian voters, less than half are with the MIC.

"At the moment, we have 400,000 Indian voters supporting MIC. And we believe there are around 900,000 Indian voters in the country.

"Our aim to reach 500,000 in voter base so that we will have more than half of the national Indian community's support," Palanivel said after attending a ceremony at the Sri Maha Mariamman temple in Rimba Jaya, Shah Alam, yesterday.

He said that the party needs to identify potential Indian voters, but are struggling to produce the desired results because of a lack of solidarity towards the party.

MIC is targeting at least 70 percent of the Indian voter base in Selangor to support the party, which he believes would help BN regain the state.

"There are some 235,000 Indian voters in Selangor. We are targeting those who are in the rural areas and in the outskirts of the city," he said, in reference to a series of nationwide briefings to engage and identify Indian voters.

He said the series were organised as "not enough people" have been attending MIC's events.

"We need new blood in the party. If we keep relying on those who are old, they can't contribute much," he told more than 100 people who attended the ceremony.

No vote-buying

Denying that MIC was "buying votes" by organising these briefings, Palanivel said: "We just pay for their transportation and food - that's less than RM20 per person. Buying votes is when you spend RM500 for every voter."

Earlier, Palanivel laid the foundation stone for the construction of the temple, which was demolished back in 2007 by the previous Selangor state government.

He took to task his BN compatriot former Selangor menteri besar Dr Mohamad Khir Toyo, saying that Khir was "stubborn" when the Indian community expressed their resentment over the temple's demolition.

The temple had been relocated to a 15,000 sq feet-land that is located behind the new Ken Rimba residential development, some 500 metres away from the original side.

It recently received RM1 million allocation from Prime Minister Najib Razak to speed up the construction works.

"I will ask for a larger land space for this temple, and maybe even more allocation. But for that, BN needs to win back the Selangor state government," Palanivel said.

- The Malay Mail

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