CHENNAI: Keeping his allies in good humour will be a major challenge DMK president MK Stalin has to handle in the upcoming bypolls in 20 Assembly constituencies. It will be for the first time that Stalin will be managing ties with allies in an electoral battle and it has also come at a very crucial phase in his political career.
The DMK now leads a rainbow alliance in the State as many of the constituents of the erstwhile People’s Welfare Front have now come under the DMK’s umbrella on many issues. The only two major opposition parties that are keeping a distance from DMK are the DMDK and PMK. How DMK manages its allies may play a crucial role in the poll outcome since in a multi-corner contest, a minor swing of votes can change the results drastically.
The Congress, DMK’s main ally, has already hinted that it would like to fight in at least a few seats. Out of the 20 vacant constituencies now, Congress contested in Sholingur and lost to AIADMK by a margin of 9,732 votes in 2016 Assembly polls. It is said that Congress is keen on contesting at least in this seat.
Besides Sholingur, three more of the 20 seats were contested by allies of DMK in 2016 elections.Most of them have expressed desire to again contest those seats. N R Dhanabalan, president of Perunthalaivar Makkal Katchi, who contested at Perambur as part of DMK’’s alliance and lost by a meagre 519 votes, told Express on Wednesday, “We will surely place our request with DMK to offer the seat to our party since we lost it by a very meagre number of votes. Now we have a sure chance to win.”
Another ally, Manithaneya Makkal Katchi which contested at Ambur in 2016, also wants to request DMK to allocate the seat to the party again since it has no representative in the Assembly.The only ally DMK has lost since the elections is Puthiya Tamizhagam. The party contested at Ottapidaram as part of DMK’s alliance, but since then the relationship strained and the party is currently unfriendly towards DMK.
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Meanwhile, four other parties - MDMK, VCK, CPI & CPM - are now maintaining friendly relationship with DMK, though they contested as a Third Front under People’s Welfare Front in 2016. However, these parties may not hope for tickets in the bypolls and VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan had already announced that his party would not contest in the bypolls.
