Battle lines are drawn in Tamil Nadu for the Assembly election scheduled for May 16. Monday, the most auspicious day in the month, saw the ruling AIADMK releasing its list of 227 candidates for the election while the rationalist DMK reaching an agreement with the Congress over the number of seats to be contested by the Grand Old Party.
The DMK allotted 41 seats to the Congress out of the total 234 seats at stake in Tamil Nadu. This is a comedown for the Congress, which had contested 63 seats in the 2011 Assembly election.
“There is nothing surprising in this scenario. It is a seller’s market for the DMK while the Congress is in a weak wicket now because of the exit of the faction led by GK Vasan from the party,” N Kalyanasundaram, Tamil Nadu’s chronicler and a keen observer of the Congress for the last six decades, told The Pioneer.
Though the Congress was bargaining hard for at least 50 seats, the DMK stood its ground that the party would be offered one seat in each of the lok Sabha constituency in the State. There are 39 lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu. It is reported that Congress got two more seats at the instance of Kanimozhi, Karunanidhi's daughter by his third wife, who has good rapport with senior leaders of the Congress.
The constituencies to be contested by the Congress would be finalised over the next two-three days , according to EVKS Elangovan. A safari-clad senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad drove down to Karunanidhi’s palatial Gopalapuram residence in Chennai on Monday morning to sign the deal. He was accompanied by Elangovan and AICC representative Mukul Wasnik. Karunanidhi was joined by son MK Stalin and daughter Kanimozhi making it a close family affair.
“Under the leadership of Karunanidhi ji, we had two meetings. We met earlier on two occasions. Here is the young leadership. We have signed a deal of 41 seats to the Congress. I am sure that under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi at national level and Karunanidhi at State level, we would be able to form the Government. In the last two decades, the AIADMK was never in power for consecutive terms. This time it is the turn of the DMK to lead the Government under Karunanidhi’s leadership,” said Azad while speaking to reporters after the deal was brokered with Karunanidhi.
Even before the DMK and the Congress formalised their agreement over the number of seats to be contested, J Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK general secretary, who is also the Chief Minister, released the names of the 227 party candidates and the constituencies to be contested by them. Jayalalithaa will seek re-election from RK Nagar, a Chennai suburb from where she was elected with a record margin of 1,50,722 votes in June 2015 after the Karnataka High Court acquitted her of all charges in the disproportionate asset case.
The AIADMK has allotted seven seats to its allies, mostly fringe caste outfits. Jayalalithaa has fielded Panruti Ramachandran, Pandiarajan and Parithi Ilamvazhithi who had crossed over to the AIADMK from DMDK and the DMK respectively. Though it was reported earlier that the TMC led by former union minister G K Vasan may align with the AIADMK, the list released by Jayalalithaa on Monday has no mention about the TMC.
While the People’s Welfare Front has reached an agreement over the number of seats to be contested by the constituents, the BJP is yet to come out with the full list of party candidates.