CHENNAI: Within minutes of AIADMK announcing TTV Dinakaran as its candidate for RK Nagar bypoll, the main opposition party DMK named 42-year-old N Maruthuganesh, functionary of the RK Nagar unit of the party and a part-time reporter in a Tamil daily, as its candidate.
The high-voltage election was necessitated by the demise of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. Veteran DMK leader and the party's general secretary K Anbazhagan announced Maruthuganesh as the party's candidate on Wednesday.
The party leadership sprang surprise by preferring Maruthuganesh over other probable candidates including Shimla Muthuchozhan, who took on Jayalalithaa in the 2016 polls.
The DMK candidate shares a traditional bond with the party as his parents too had been with DMK. His mother Parvathi Narayanasami was elected as Chennai Corporation councillor for two terms, party sources recalled.
The party is believed to enter the fray with a hope to win by capitalising on the political polarisation taking place now after the split in AIADMK. Both the AIADMK factions are expected to contest the poll. Late Jayalalaithaa's niece Deepa Jayakumar had already announced that she too would contest the election.