Chennai: Political parties of all hues and sizes have embarked on a wide range of poll related activities like alliance formation, seat-sharing talks, manifesto preparation and so on while the arrival of a deputy election commissioner and a principal secretary from the Election Commission of India (ECI) to hold discussions with authorities responsible for holding elections in the State has also send officialdom into a tizzy.
As part of the tours undertaken by ECI officials to various states to ensure free and fair polling in the coming Lok Sabha elections, deputy election commissioner S H Ajay Badu and principal secretary Malay Malik are in Chennai. While they met authorities in the central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax on Tuesday, they would have discussions with the district collectors and other officials responsible for conducting the polls across the State through video conference on Wednesday.
On the political front, hectic bargaining was happening in various places. AIADMK leader S Ve Shanmugham is said to have called on PMK founder S Ramadoss at his Thailapuram Garden residence on Monday to invite him to join the AIADMK alliance.
The grapevine has it that the AIADMK, despite looking out for allies after walking out of the BJP-led NDA desperately, could not immediately accede to the demands of the PMK, which reportedly wanted five Lok Sabha seats to contest and one nomination for the Rajya Sabha.
The PMK is also said to be in talks with the BJP, from whose alliance it broke away, but could not clinch a deal. While the BJP, too, is keen on forming an alliance of its own with smaller parties in the State, the PMK’s request for a slot in the Union Cabinet could not be assured of on the spot, sources said.
Now, the BJP is hoping to get the support of parties like the DMDK founded by Vijayakanth, the AMMK of T T V Dinakaran, the erstwhile AIADMK faction of O Panneerselvam, G K Vasan’s Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC), Puthiya Tamilagam of K Krishnaswamy, New Justice Party of A C Shanmugham, Samathuva Makkal Katchi of Sharath Kumar and India Jananayaga Katchi of T R Pachamuthu.
But it is not clear as to how many of the small parties had agreed to tie up with the BJP without the AIADMK being part of the alliance. State BJP leaders, however, wanted to finalize the alliance line up before the visit of BJP national president J P Nadda to Chennai on Sunday. The leaders want the alliance to be sealed by then so that the leaders of the various parties could be paraded on the stage when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses a meeting at Palladam in Tiruppur district on February 25.
The AIADMK leaders, too, are keen on completing the process of finalizing the coalition at the earliest and have been holding several rounds of meetings by various committees formed for specific purposes. Top leaders like Valarmathii, R B Udhayakumar, D Jayakumar, Chemmalai and Natham Viswanthan had called on general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami for discussions.
Though the AIADMK leaders hoped that many of the erstwhile NDA partners would prefer to throw their weight behind it rather than the BJP, the Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI) is the lone party that had seemingly confirmed an association. So the leaders are leaving no stone unturned in luring parties into its fold, mainly because it has an additional task of shedding its communal image.
