CHENNAI: Their fate has already been sealed, and is in safe custody in strongrooms. With just a couple of days more for the May 4 verdict, the chief ministerial candidates are counting the days, trying to read the implications of the record 85% turnout.
DMK president and Chief Minister MK Stalin has taken a time off from politics and gone to Kodaikanal after reviewing the post-poll analysis carried out by his party workers and the strategist firm Populus Empowerment Network (PEN).
Sources with DMK said before leaving for a short vacation, Stalin visited the party’s war-room at the DMK headquarters and the PEN office on April 24 to review the post poll analysis.
“Our leader met the functionaries and candidates in and around Chennai, and they all briefed him about the status of their constituencies. After all the review work, he left for Kodaikanal on April 25 and is likely to return by the weekend,” a source told TNIE.
For AIADMK general secretary and opposition leader Edappadi K Palaniswami, the time between election and counting is meant for back-to-back review meetings with party functionaries. After casting his vote in Salem on April 23, he left for Chennai the very next day and has been camping in the capital since.
A source privy to the developments in the opposition party said Palaniswami met the candidates in Chennai, who apprised him about the situation on the ground. “It was after this that he released a statement, asking our party workers to be vigilant of the DMK’s back-door activities to capture power. He is still assessing the polling pattern constituency by constituency,” he said.
Meanwhile, TVK president C Joseph Vijay has embarked on a spiritual tour on Tuesday after reviewing the voting patterns across the state with his party’s senior leaders including Bussy N Anand and Aadhav Arjuna at the actor-cum-politician’s Panaiyur residence.
A TVK source said for Vijay, the voting patterns across the state is satisfactory. Vijay has called for a meeting with the party’s candidates on April 30 and a separate meeting with the party’s district secretaries on the same day.
After the polls, NTK chief coordinator Seeman is also back in Chennai and has given instructions to his party workers on the “working plan” on the day of the counting.
“He also held discussions with his party senior leaders on Tuesday to organise the Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day event to commemorate the thousands of Tamil civilians killed during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War 2009, to be organised on May 18,” a state functionary part of the meeting told TNIE.