CHENNAI: The ruling DMK on Sunday decided to field three candidates for the biennial elections to the six Rajya Sabha seats scheduled to be held on June 17.
The candidates are: KP Ramalingam, secretary of the DMK’s farmers wing, former ministers S Thangavel and TN Selvaganapathy.
A decision to this effect was taken at the high-power committee meeting of the DMK held at party headquarters here.
However, the DMK’s decision to field three candidates has proved wrong the speculations that are doing the rounds that it would allocate one more seat to its ally, the Congress. The Congress will have to contest only one seat and it would win that as the party had 36 MLAs in the State Assembly whereas the necessary strength for winning a seat is only 34.
Similarly, the DMK can comfortably win three seats with the help of VCK which has two MLAs. The DMK needs 102 MLAs to win three seats while it has 100 members in the State Assembly. Besides, unattached member S Ve Shekher would also support the DMK. As such, the DMK can win three seats without the support of the PMK which has 18 members in the Assembly.
The CPI, CPM and the MDMK had already expressed their support for the the AIADMK which will be fielding two candidates.
The overall political picture for the RS elections now makes it clear that there would not be any election to the six seats as the number of nominations and the number of vacant seats would be equal.