Chennai: With an avowed objective of serving the people, the DMK was sure to romp home in the 2026 elections with an overwhelming majority by winning at least 200 of the 234 seats in the State Assembly since it had been implementing welfare schemes much to the appreciation and benefit of the people, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Thursday.
A day after returning from Coimbatore, where his announcement of six new projects for the district was termed as ‘hitting a sixer,’ Stalin, in his customary epistle to party cadre, acknowledged the Western district evidently turning into a DMK bastion already and said that he hoped to win the 10 Assembly seats there.
What he witnessed during his visit to Coimbatore disproved the earlier misconception that the Western region was a hole in the overall popularity canvas of the DMK, he said, attributing the surging support to local leaders like Minister V Senthil Balaji and others. He lauded Senthil Balaji for overcoming the obstacles thrown at this path and the attempts to take him away from the political arena and keeping Coimbatore as the DMK’s iron fortress.
Having started his mission to meet people personally in Coimbatore on November 5 and 6, he would next visit Virudhunagar district for an official inspection of the implementation of welfare schemes and to get to know the needs of the common people on November 9 and 10 and then go all over the State, the Chief Minister told his party cadre.
Impressed by the rousing reception given to him when he landed at Coimbatore with people, particularly women and youth, lining up on both sides of the road for over 6 km to cheer him and greet him and grandmothers bringing their grandchildren to welcome him, Stalin announced that he had no doubts of winning the 2026 polls.
He was also happy over the efficient manner in which DMK functionaries in the district had been working to reach out to the people and also explain to them the welfare projects of the government. One functionary from Mettupalayam had held 46 meetings and even brought the minutes of the proceedings to the review held by him, he said.
Another local functionary from Sulur had organized 57 party events, which were indicators of the DMK becoming popular in the district and the entire State, paving the way for an encore of the success in the next electoral battle, too. Whenever the DMK came to power, through its long term vision it had envisaged infrastructural schemes that would benefit the people and one such project was the Tidel Park in Coimbatore that was started by M Karunanidhi in 2009, opening up job opportunities for people in the locality.
Now around that Tidel Park, an IT hub had been envisaged with the support of the private sector that would take Coimbatore to a different level of development something on par with the IT Corridor in Chennai’s OMR, he said.
The epistle, primarily motivating the party cadre to immediately start the work for the 2026 elections, also reflected DMK’s concern over losing its youth force as the Chief Minister specifically mentioned that he was delighted to see youth and women among those who had gathered to welcome him.
