Poll Preparations Pick up Momentum

Chennai: The DMK called for applications from its members aspiring to contest the coming Lok Sabha elections even before the emergence of a clear picture on the constituencies that the party would be contesting from with the seat-sharing agreement with allies not being completed.

A communique from party general secretary Duraimurugan on Thursday said that aspirants could start collecting the application forms from the party office by paying Rs 2000 from Monday and then submit the filled up form between March 1 and 7 after paying a fee of Rs 50,000.

While the DMK led alliance might remain intact as the smaller parties are likely to settle for the same number of seats that were allotted to them for the last Lok Sabha polls in 2019, despite all of them evincing interest in increasing the number, seat identification might run into trouble.

The biggest ally of the DMK, the Congress, has already begun the talks with the coalition leader and it would continue when the Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge visits Chennai next. The other allies are expected to finalise their deals soon after that.

But the BJP that is set to lead a coalition in the State will be deciding on the allies to rope in and also the number of seats to be allotted to each of them after a meeting in New Delhi during the weekend. A delegation of State-level leaders are leaving for Delhi on February 16 to meet the top honchos at the national level.

In fact, the BJP leadership is said to have called its State-level office bearers from all the States to finalize alliances and also seat-sharing arrangements during the weekend. The delegation, led by State president K Annamalai, will brief the national leadership on the ground situation in the State before taking a final call.

As of now there are only a few leaders like O Panneerselvam, T T V Dinakaran, V K Sasikala (all of them formerly with the AIADMK), A C Shanmugam (New Justice Party) and T R Pachamuthu (India Jananayaga Katchi) have shown interest to tie up with the BJP with some of them calling on national president J P Nadda when he visited Chennai recently.

The AIADMK, too, is finding it difficult to wrap up the alliance as some parties like the PMK and DMDK are dithering on finalizing agreements. However the parties are going about their own political activities like the PMK releasing its shadow budget on Wednesday.

The shadow budget unveiled by party president Anbumani Ramados had a plethora of schemes for various sections of people and predicted an economic downturn in the State with statistics.

By opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act, which the PMK had favoured when it came for voting in Parliament, in the shadow budget, the party has enabled one to infer that the party might not move back into the BJP fold, though it has not said yes to the AIADMK yet.

The DMDK, too, is busy consolidating on its cadre base following the passing away of the party’s founder Vijayakanth recently but is said to be still negotiating with the AIADMK for a poll agreement. Though the party might not be averse for a tie-up with the BJP, it is said the State leadership of the national party has other ideas on fighting the Lok Sabha polls to prove and also evaluate its growth in the State.