CHENNAI: Stung by its dismal performance in RK Nagar by-poll where its candidate lost his deposit, the DMK is ambitiously initiating a drive to infuse fresh blood into the party organisation and lift the sagging morale of the party cadre. The working president MK Stalin is to begin a two-month long interaction with party office-bearers on February 1
Right from district secretaries, who top the hierarchy in districts, to the base unit heads, he will have a meeting to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the party and ways to reinvigorate the organisation to equip itself for facing future challenges, particularly snap polls.Stalin’s ambitious interaction with district-wise party office-bearers will begin with western parts, as the DMK had already announced holding of a regional conference in Erode in March.
As per the schedule released by the party, he will meet office-bearers of Coimbatore City North and South in the morning on Thursday followed by an interaction with those from The Nilgiris. Subsequently, office-bearers from Coimbatore Rural, Erode, Tirupur, Salem, Dharmapuri and Namakkal districts will be invited for the interaction.
Organisational issues, differences and disunity among functionaries at various levels came to the fore during the recent RK Nagar by-election where DMK candidate N Marudhu Ganesh could secure only about 24,000 votes sending shock waves within the party organisation.
Gauging the trouble, Stalin quickly reacted by setting up a three-member panel to go into the factors that led to the shocking defeat at the hands of T T V Dhinakaran. Following the findings of the panel, all the division level committees falling under RK Nagar segment were disbanded, party sources said.Moreover, Chennai North district secretary and MLA S Sudharsanam was wrapped on the knuckles at a meeting of the district secretaries for the worst performance in the polls.
Since the by-election defeat, the leadership realised the need to lift the sagging morale of the partymen.
“The morale of the party cadre is drooping ever since our failure to wrest power from AIADMK in 2016 Assembly polls. Their hope was rekindled when the infighting in AIADMK worsened in the aftermath of the demise of the then Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. Again, we failed to capitalise on the fluid situation,” a senior DMK leader recalled.
He added, “The shock defeat in RK Nagar caught the party off guard. So, we realised the need to interact with the office-bearers at all levels, and thrash out differences.”The interaction will end on March 22. Stalin would meet office-bearers from Chennai city and its adjoining districts of Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur on March 17. Several issues, including Rajinikanth’s political plunge and Kamal Haasan’s ‘Naalai Namadhe’, is likely to come up during the interaction.