Chennai: At one go, DMK president M K Stalin today released the full list of candidates of his party for the upcoming Assembly elections. The list consists of 173 candidates.
Stalin announced that he will contest again from Kolathur constituency and his son and party’s youth wing leader Udhayanidhi Stalin will contest from Chepauk-Triplicane constituency.
Stalin announced that the party’s general secretary Durai Murugan will contest from the Katpadi constituency.
Sampathkumar has been fielded against Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami in Edappadi.
Stalin said that he will file nomination on 15 March and will start his election campaign. He also said that the election manifesto of the party will be released tomorrow.
Stalin released the list, retaining most sitting MLAs including seniors K N Nehru, K Ponmudi, Thangam Thennarasu, S R Raja, T M Anbarasan, E Karunanidhi and MRK Panneerselvam, besides others.
Mahesh Poyyamozhi has been fielded again from Thiruverumbur, Poondi Kalaivanan will contest form Thiruavarur, Karthikeya Sivasenapathi will contest against Minister S P Velumani at the Thondamuthur constituency, S M Nasser has been filed at Avadi and S Chandran at Tiruttani.
“Since many of the parties including the MDMK will be contesting on DMK’s Rising Sun symbol, DMK will be effectively in fray in 187 seats,” Stalin said.
He further said, “Despite more number of parties in the alliance and most of them seeking same constituencies, we handled the seat sharing very smoothly, even burning the midnight oil.”
Stalin urged party cadres to consider former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi as the candidate in all the constituencies in the State and work hard for the victory
Earlier in the day, Stalin paid tributes to Karunanidhi’s portrait at his Gopalapuram residence.
The DMK has allotted 25 seats to its ally Congress party, and six each for CPI, CPI(M) Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and MDMK. In total, 60 segments have been set apart for allies by the DMK.