CHENNAI : Although many political parties in the State are already preparing themselves for the by-elections to 20 constituencies, the firmness shown by the Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat on Monday in holding the by-elections ahead of the Lok Sabha elections has given additional momentum to parties in gearing up for the by-polls. The Election Commission (EC) had recently postponed the by-election to two constituencies – Tiruparankundram and Tiruvarur – for two reasons. While the bypoll announcement for Tiruparankundram was deferred as a case in this connection was pending before Madras High Court, the bypoll announcement for Tiruvarur was postponed due to meteorological predictions that there would be serious weather conditions in due course.
The notification about the Lok Sabha elections is expected in the second week of March and the EC is likely to complete the by-elections in Tamil Nadu at least one month ahead of it. So, the EC may notify the by-election just after the northeast monsoon is over in the State - i.e., in January. The CEC had, on Monday, also indicated that the by-election to Tiruparankundram constituency depends on the verdict of the High Court in the pending case.
Just after the Madras HC upheld the disqualification of the 18 MLAs, the AMMK-led by TTV Dhinakaran decided not to challenge the verdict before the Supreme Court as it would be a time-consuming process and such a move would give a breather to the AIADMK government which is surviving on a wafer-thin majority. Besides, the opposition parties started criticising that the ruling party is afraid of facing the by-elections.
To counter this, the AIADMK announced 122 election in-charges for 20 Assembly constituencies comprising ministers and senior functionaries. On the other hand, opposition DMK also started gearing up for the by-elections along with its preparations for Lok Sabha elections. A couple of days ago, the State BJP convened its core committee meeting and discussed the by-elections. Later, the party appointed in-charges for the by-elections.
Now that the EC has promised to conduct the by-elections ahead of Lok Sabha elections, political parties are expected to speed up their activities from January for facing the ‘mini Assembly elections’.
CPI leader meets Stalin, discusses general polls
Chennai: In order to forge an alliance with the DMK for the 2019 parliamentary elections,
S Sudhakar Reddy, CPI national general secretary, met DMK president M K Stalin at the latter’s residence here on Tuesday evening. Sudhakar Reddy said, the BJP-led Union government was exploiting the institutions such as CBI, RBI, ONGC and others. Hence, it is necessary to cobble up an alliance of all non-BJP parties to save the country and democracy. “We have been speaking to like-minded State parties, secular parties and Left parties,” he said. “In Tamil Nadu, the DMK will play an important role in creating the alliance,” he added.