With negotiations still going on among contestants to posts in various units of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Coimbatore, there appears to be brewing disgruntlement among workers.
Party workers and office-bearers, who spoke to The Hindu, said that the negotiations to ‘elect’ candidates for the ward secretary posts appear to be going in favour of supporters of former Mayor and urban district secretary S.M. Velusamy. In other words, the incumbents are likely to get ‘re-elected’.
They said that it was a wonderful opportunity urban district secretary and Mayor P. Rajkumar had missed by not giving opportunity to new faces, his supporters and that of other bigwigs. In the process he had antagonised Members of Legislative Assembly V.C. Aarukutty, T. Malaravan and R. Chinnasamy.
Mr. Aarukutty and Mr. Chinnasamy, however, denied saying that they were happy with how Mr. Rajkumar held the elections.
Mr. Malaravan was unavailable for comment.
The sources said that retaining the old guard would only be detrimental to Mr. Rajkumar’s interests as it would only support Mr. Velusamy, whom the party unceremoniously removed after the 2014 Parliamentary elections. Plus, those who had opposed Mr. Velusamy would feel let down without getting party posts.
They said that in a few cases, little known rules such as the need for contestants to be residents of the wards they were fighting for were being arbitrarily used to edge out a few and pointed to issues in the T.K. Market area and Saibaba Colony. All these were seen as voices of disgruntlement by those within the party.
However, sources close to Mr. Rajkumar said that there were no voices of disgruntlement but voices of mischief aimed at discrediting Mr. Rajkumar.
He was keen on avoiding problems among workers and wanted to take them along as one group. His supporters were ready to accept any posts that Mr. Rajkumar was ready to offer and were not keen only on the ward secretaryship.
