Poll fever in Ooty, AIADMK man files papers

Ooty: The election-fervour has begun to engulf the hills of Nilgiris as candidates from Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) and AIADMK filed nominations at the collectorate on Friday.

While S.Manimegalai of NTK is the first candidate to file the nominations for this LS polls in Nilgiris, it was Mr M. Thiyagarajan, the AIADMK candidate, stole the show  as he came in a procession with a huge array of AIADMK and its alliance party cadres to the collectorate to file his nomination. As per the details given in his nomination papers, the value of his assets, including that of his family members, is around Rs 1.33 crore.

His nomination filing episode was with  twists and turns. While the DMDK and PMK party leaders  entered into a spat with ruling party cadres inside the collectorate as they were not allowed to accompany the AIADMK candidate.

Though the AIADMK bigwigs here pacified them, the other spat began with the rival AIADMK groups led by the district secretary Budhichandran and former district secretary K.R. Arjunan, this time over a silly issue pertaining to from which spot the candidate should address the media.

Meanwhile, A. Raja, the DMK candidate kick-started his poll campaign trail in Nilgiris on Thursday itself.  He is expected to file is nomination on Monday.

The cops went erring in their crowd regulation during the filing ofnomination as the AIADMK and its alliance party leaders here, along with the party functionaries blocked the entrance to Town West Police Station located near the collectorate here to climb upon an elevated portion there to use it as podium to address the large gathering of the party cadres there. The sudden poll address from that spot hit vehicular traffic as well on the busy Commissioner's Road here.