Chennai: In a sign of an impending poll battle, the ruling AIADMK has released its list of candidates just hours after arch-rival DMK sealed a seat-sharing pact with the Congress. The AIADMK leaves just seven of the 234 seats to its allies setting the stage for aggressive electioneering.
It is a marriage of necessity versus an aggressive AIADMK deciding to battle it out. Clearly the election fever is reaching a new high in Tamil Nadu. The Congress is allotted 41 of the total 234 seats for the upcoming polls. After three rounds of discussions on the seat sharing deal, the party had to settle for much less because of its poor track record. The Congress has been out of power for the past 49 years in Tamil Nadu.
Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, “We had two meetings earlier with the DMK leadership. We have signed 41 seats for Congress party and the major share will go to the DMK and for other allies too. I am sure that under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi at Centre and DMK’s Karunanidhi in state, the DMK will form the government.”
DMK Treasurer and chief ministerial nominee MK Stalin said, “Only the DMK-Congress alliance can put an end to the AIADMK rule. Today we will begin the task of identifying constituencies.”
Hours later, the ruling AIADMK released the list of candidates deciding to contest 227 seats with seven seats allotted for its allies. This is the first time the party is contesting majority of the constituencies.
The AIADMK leader will contest from RK Nagar, the same constituency where she won with a huge margin of 1.5 lakh votes in the by-poll held in June 2015. Unlike the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, this time Jayalalithaa has decided to go for the old loyalists with former CM and finance minister O Panneerselvam and Power Minister Natham Vishwanathan contesting in Bodinayakkanur and Aathur respectively. JCD Prabhakaran will contest in Kolathur which is DMK’s CM face MK Stalin's constituency. However P Palaniappan, Higher education Minister, is not in the list of candidates. Interestingly these three loyalists were not part of the seat sharing talks that were held by the party on Sunday.
GK Vasan of the Tamil Maanila Congress is now left in the lurch as he's not part of both the Dravidian parties. His contribution to the Congress's overall vote base was over 2.5% in the past.
Two pre-poll surveys have predicted that the AIADMK will retain power in the state. And if this comes true it will certainly be the first time since the MGR regime that a ruling party stays two consecutive terms in power. There is clearly an interesting battle in the state this summer.
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