Chennai: The ruling AIADMK’s candidates contesting in the Lok Sabha elections today started filing their nominations in several locations.
The party’s South Chennai candidate J Jayavardhan submitted his papers at Adyar during which he was accompanied by MLAs R Nataraj and Virugai N Ravi. The DMK candidates are expected to file their papers on Monday, while the Congress’ candidates list for Tamilnadu is expected to be out later today.
Sources said till yesterday 48 candidates had filed their nominations for the Lok Sabha polls and eight contestants have applied for the Assembly bypolls and it is said all of them were independent candidates. Filing of nomination papers for phase-2 of the 2019 general elections began 19 March. With the general elections and by-elections being conducted on 18 April in Tamilnadu, the last date of filing nomination in is 26 March and the nominations will be scrutinisied 27 March.
The last date to withdraw nominations is 29 March. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami today began his Lok Sabha campaigning and sought vote in Karumandhurai for DMDK’s L K Sudheesh who is contesting from Kallakurichi Lok Sabha constituency.
Palaniswami said only under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country will be safe. “Only if the country is safe, people can live peacefully. Modi should be elected again to ensure that another incident like Pulwama in whcih 40 army men were killed does not take place,” he added. He further said AIADMK forged an alliance with BJP for the wellness of the country and the people. “This is not just a normal election, but a battle between dharmam and Adharmam,” he said.
Meanwhile, BJP State president Tamilisai Soundararajan said she will file her nomination to contest from the Thoothukudi Lok Sabha constituency on 25 March and will begin her election campaign on the same day.
“A plan has been formulated for the development of Thoothukudi and it will be released by Union Minister for Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal on 26 March,” she said.
| AIADMK candidate for Periyakulam, Murugan, has been replaced by M Mayilvel. It is one of the 18 constituencies going to polls in the by-elections to the Assembly on 18 April. According to a press release from the AIADMK, Mayilvel has been selected as the official candidate for the Assembly constituency by the working committee of the party, in place of the candidate already announced. It is said Murugan had been neglecting his constituency and staying in Chennai for the past few years. Also, the AIADMK cadres had wanted a strong candidate to fight the AMMK contestant, Kadhirkamu, and that was one of the reasons for the change of candidate. |