CHENNAI: The Rajini Makkal Mandram (RMM) is quietly getting ready to face the 2021 Assembly polls with meetings taking place at Ragavendra Kalyana Mandapam in the last few days. Even as the actor is out of station, the newly-appointed chief coordinator of his yet-to-be-launched party, R Arjuna Murthy, supervisor Tamilaruvi Manian and RMM senior functionary VM Sudhakar are interacting with select functionaries.
Inside sources told Express that they have been asked to keep the meetings a ‘secret’ to avoid media glare and not to disclose this even to their subordinates. One of the instructions given to the functionaries was to reset the booth committees across the State with at least 15 ‘hardcore members’ of the actor’s fan club. It is learnt that around 10 district secretaries were part of the meeting which took place in a room at the marriage hall, which is temporarily functioning as office of the yet-to-be-launched party.
Sources told Express that the discussions revolved around membership strength of RMM in each of the 234 Assembly constituencies. Strengths and weaknesses of other political parties were also discussed.A district secretary who attended the meeting told Express, “We expect appointment of new secretaries to some of the district units as there were discussions about some of the functionaries in the meeting. We are happy that finally our organisation is getting into the mood to face the elections.”
Party name?
Meanwhile, a few news reports claimed on Tuesday that a party named ‘Makkal Sevai Katchi’ had been registered in the Election Commission with Rajinikanth as a functionary. In response, the RMM issued a statement which neither confirmed nor denied the reports. It merely appealed to the members to wait till the official announcement. Some RMM functionaries expressed disappointment over this saying that if the information is true, early announcement would make it easy to popularise the name and the symbol, or a denial might help in getting clarity. “There is no logic in such vague statements,” a functionary said.