Chennai: The ruling AIADMK on Monday set the election ball rolling by releasing its list of candidates for the Chennai Corporation polls. The party also showed the door to non performers and those with bad reputations.
Despite being hospitalised, the party leader Ms Jayalalithaa beat her political rivals in releasing first the candidates’ list for all the 200 wards in Chennai. The party is fielding party seniors J.C.D. Prabhakar and N. Balaganga to contest from ward 80 and ward 78. The names of both seniors are doing the rounds for the coveted post of Chennai mayor among party channels.
The AIADMK list reveals that the ruling party has carefully weeded out errant councillors as well as the incumbent mayor Saidai S. Duraisamy from contesting.
The party, which has 170 councillors in the 200-ward council, gave party seats to only 31 of them, which means the party has shown the door to more than 60 per cent of its councillors, including several zonal chairman and members of corporation standing committees.
To ensure that the list is clean, the party has fielded young political novices. To balance the equations at the ground level and take on the DMK, which has more MLAs in Chennai, the AIADMK is fielding local heavyweights in all the 15 zones of the city corporation. Other notable names in the list are former MLAs, K. Kuppan of Thiruvottriyur, VNP Venkatraman of Alandur, K.P. Kandan of Sholinganallur and sitting councillor Seema Basheer of Harbour.
