Justifying his stand that the choice of candidates in the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) was wrong, the suspended leader M.K. Alagiri cited specific examples of candidates at a meeting with his supporters here on Monday.
He said the Virudhunagar candidate S. Rethinvelu had lauded the Madurai Mayor, V.V. Rajan Chellappa, soon after the latter was elected as the Mayor. Though the candidate was the president of Tamil Nadu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he was not a known person among the locals in Virudhunagar and for the party cadres he was a stranger.
Similarly, he was critical about the party’s Theni candidate Pon. Muthuramalingam, whom he said, “may fall prey to pressures from political rivals. He cannot take on the electoral battle successfully.”
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“I am scared as the party would lose badly finishing only in the fourth place,” he noted.
When the DMK’s outgoing MP from Nagercoil, Helen Davidson, had performed well in Parliament and spent the MP Local Area Development fund productively in her constituency, what prevented the party from giving her another chance to contest again. “I am sure the party would have won hands down. The present DMK candidate was not a right choice as he was with the AIADMK for long,” Mr. Alagiri said and added that reasons were not known as to why the sitting MP of Tuticorin was ignored and the district secretary N. Periasami’s son Jegan was given the seat.
The DMK president M. Karunanidhi’s son continued to hit against DMK candidates for Tirunelveli, Perambalur, Salem and many others. He did not spare even the party’s senior leader Durai Murugan. The disciplinary action taken by the high command was selective, he alleged.
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Many of Mr. Alagiri’s supporters from districts including Theni, Ramanathapuram, Sivaganga, Madurai, Virudhunagar, among others, said that they expected the party high-command to solve the imbroglio as early as possible. “For us, Alagiri and Stalin are two sides of a coin…Our president should not see them fight each other. The blame game should stop here,” they noted.
The DMK Lok Sabha MP Rithish Kumar, who was present at the meeting, said that they would stand by Mr. Alagiri till the end and hoped that there would be a good solution sooner.