Chennai: Even before seats could be shared among alliance partners, the two Dravidian majors- the ruling AIADMK and the main opposition DMK-are moving ahead with the next step — identification of candidates.
According to sources, the first set of AIADMK’s contestatants will be revealed later today and the list will mostly include the names of the seniors including Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Deputy CM O Panneerselvam.
As far as the DMK is concerned, its president M K Stalin today said the candidates list will be released on 10 March.
Interestingly, both the AIADMK and the DMK leaderships today held meetings with their respective district secretaries to finalise the names of contestants.
DMK on Thursday finalised the seat sharing agreement with Viduthalai Chiruthaigal
Katchi (VCK) for the 6 April Assembly elections by allotting six seats to it.
After heacgic parleys over the last one week, the seat sharing agreement was signed by Stalin and VCK founder and Lok Sabha member Thol Thirumavalavan.
Earlier, VCK cadres, during a meeting held at its party office, staged a protest against DMK’s decision to allot very less number of seats to it.
However, Thirumavalavan appealed to them to respect the party’s decision as it has decided to accept lesser number of seats to prevent AIADMK-led BJP from winning the elections.
The DMK had already allotted three and two seats to its minor allies IUML and MMK respectively.
The seat sharing talks with key allies Congress and the two left parties–CPI and CPI(M)–yielded no result as they were reluctant to accept the seats offered by the DMK.
In the AIADMK camp, Palaniswami and Panneerselvam, who on Thursday interviewed party aspirants who submitted applications seeking party ticket for contesting in the elections, chaired the party’s district secretaries meet today.
On Thursday, interviews from across the State was completed in a single day. Over 8,200 party office bearers submitted applications for themselves as well as in the name of others too
Apart from Palaniswami and Panneerselvam, the interview committee included deputy secretaries K P Munusamy and R Vaithilingam; the medical wing secretary P Venugopal; literary wing secretary B Valarmathi and MGR Mandram secretary Tamilmagan Hussain.
Addressing the aspirants, Palaniswami urged them to extend cooperation to the selected candidates. He claimed that even though the party was in power for 10 years, its good governance saw to it that no adverse feeling got reflected among people. “If the party won the election, no force can defeat us,” he added.