CHENNAI: The AIADMK-led alliance on Wednesday took final shape with GK Vasan’s Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) settling for one Lok Sabha seat. Thus, the TMC, an offshoot of Congress, has joined the NDA-ed by BJP at the national level. After many rounds of negotiations, Vasan and AIADMK top brass Edappadi K Palaniswami and O Panneerselvam signed the seat-sharing agreement at a hotel here. Perunthalaivar Makkal Katchi leader NR Dhanapalan, a known supporter of DMK, on Wednesday, joined the AIADMK-led alliance.
Announcing the alliance, Panneerselvam said as per the agreement, TMC will extend full support to AIADMK candidates in the by-elections to 21 Assembly constituencies. Later, leaders of alliance parties held a two-hour-long discussion at AIADMK headquarters to finalise the identification of constituencies for each party. However, the exercise could not be completed. Panneerselvam announced that the constituencies allotted to alliance partners will be announced later.
The seat-sharing among the AIADMK alliance partners in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry is : AIADMK (20), PMK (7), BJP (5), DMDK (4), New Justice Party (NJP) (1), Puthiya Tamizhagam (1), TMC (1) and NR Congress (1). Of them, NJP is contesting on AIADMK’s ‘two leaves’ symbol. AC Shanmugam, leader of the party, said NJP had got the constituency which he sought, but the proper announcement should be made by AIADMK. TMC leader BS Gnanadesikan, told reporters that the TMC had lost its ‘bicycle’ symbol after its merger with Congress. “Now, we have applied for bicycle symbol and the Election Commission will give its decision next week; if we are not given bicycle symbol, we will contest on some other symbol.”
On forging an alliance with a front in which BJP is also present, Gnanadesikan said “From election to election, alliances keep changing. Even if we align with BJP, we will not give up our principles and ideologies. Except Left parties and Congress, all other parties have aligned with BJP in the past. DMK may say they had aligned with BJP-led by Vajpayee and now the party is led by Narendra Modi.”
Responding to a question, he said “In accordance with alliance dharma, we will canvass votes for BJP too.”
Apart from AIADMK top brass, BJP election in charge for Tamil Nadu, Piyush Goyal, Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan, BJP State president Tamilisai Soundararajan, PMK president GK Mani, DMDK deputy general secretary LK Sudheesh, TMC president GK Vasan, Puthiya Tamizhagam president K Krishnasamy, NJP leader AC Shanmugam, Perunthalaivar Makkal Katchi leader NR Dhanapalan and many others were present. AIADMK deputy coordinator KP Munusamy welcomed the leaders and Panneerselvam thanked them.
On behalf of NDA, Piyush Goyal welcomed the leaders and thanked them for coming together to defeat the DMK-Congress ‘unholy alliance’ in the State. Goyal also wished Vijaykanth good health and long life. He also recalled his association with Vasan in Parliament and said both were very good friends. “We are all now going to work together to defeat the Congress which has been reduced to a party of corruption and a leaderless party.