Chennai: The political campaign has gained heat in the past few days and along with the Lok Sabha elections, the parties are also focusing on the Assembly by-elections.
The Perambur Assembly constituency part of the North Chennai Lok Sabha seat will be facing by-poll. While DMDK’s Mohan Raj has been fielded for the North Chennai Lok Sabha constituency on behalf of the AIADMK alliance, the ruling party has fielded R S Rajesh to contest in the Permabur by-election. This has created confusion among the party cadres. While the DMDK cadres complain that there is not enough support from the AIADMK cadres for Mohan Raj during the campaign, the AIADMK cadres say that they are confused whether they should focus on the by-election or the Lok Sabha polls.
Most AIADMK cadres are focused only on being with the Ministers instead of garnering votes for the candidate.
“The AIADMK cadres feel that being with the Ministers will earn them good name with which they can get more benefits in the future. But no so with alliance parties. They feel that they will not be useful to them after the election. One more aspect what affects their cooperation for Mohan Raj is that they are concentrating more in the Assembly bypolls,” said an alliance party cadre.
“Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami campaigned in North Chennai in support of Mohan Raj after that not much campaigning has been done by the AIADMK cadres and infact they have shifted their focus to Rajesh and are camped in Perambur,” the cadre said and added that if the same situation continues, things might turn sour between the party cadres.
On the other hand AIADMK cadres say that they are confused on whether to focus on the Lok Sabha or the by-election. “We have to win the by-election at all cost and we are putting in more effort in that. It does not mean that we are not concentrating on the Lok Sabha elections. We are extending as much support as we can and more cadres are garnering votes for both the candidates,” said a AIADMK cadre.
Sources said the AIADMK cadres are hesitant to spend money for their alliance party cadre as they feel that they will not get any benefit in return and that it is the duty of the alliance party to take care of the election expenses.
In other hand, there seems to be no such confusions in the DMK alliance. The DMK has fielded its candidates Kalanithi Veeraswamy and R D Sekar for the Lok Sabha and Assembly constituency, respectively.