The DMK on Sunday dissolved all its party units in Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar Assembly constituency based on the report of the three-member committee that looked into the circumstances that led to the humiliating defeat of the party’s candidate Marudu Ganesh in the recent bypoll.
The committee headed by party whip R. Chakrapani has advocates R. Girirajan and Kannadasan as its members. It submitted its report to the party’s working president M.K. Stalin on Sunday.
The R.K. Nagar constituency is part of DMK’s North Chennai district unit. Though officially it has seven wards, the DMK had divided them into 14 for administrative purposes. Now, all the units in these wards have been dissolved and new party in-charges will be appointed soon.
According to party sources, while the purpose of the probe was to identify the lapses of the partymen in the constituency during the election, the committee had also reported on the role played by money. What worried the party was its candidate’s failure to retain the deposit and the steep erosion in its vote base. In contrast, in 2016, party’s candidate Shimla Muthuchozhan had secured around 56,000 votes despite contesting against the then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.
A senior leader claimed when the DMK cadres approached local people with a pencil and paper to gather their opinion on the election, many of them came with the ₹20 currency notes allegedly distributed by the winning candidate T.T.V. Dhinakaran’s supporters thinking that the party had come to settle the amount.
The committee in its report also said that in many units people were not active because of age and health problems. The party decided to revamp all the units to prepare them for future elections.
