The Election Commission will soon formally issue the letter of recognition as a State party to the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), led by actor-politician Vijayakant, and the All India N.R. Congress (AINRC) of Puducherry Chief Minister N. Rangasamy, considering their performance in the recent Assembly elections.
“They need not apply to the Election Commission, it will be done automatically as they have fulfilled the EC's conditions for recognition as a State party,” informed sources in the EC said here on Wednesday.
The two parties would be asked to select the poll symbol of their choice from the free symbols or they could create their own symbol provided it conforms to the EC's provisions and guidelines relating to symbols.
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The DMDK and the AINRC are, at present, only registered parties. The EC's recognition will provide them benefits such as allocation of separate poll symbol, invitation to all-party meetings convened by the EC and allotment of air time on All India Radio and Doordarshan for poll campaign.
The EC's recognition comes to Mr. Vijayakant nearly after six years since he formed his party in 2005.
Though the DMDK contested in all the 234 Assembly seats in the 2006 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections independently and obtained around 8 per cent of the total votes polled in that election, since it won only one seat — Vijayakant from Vridhachalam — recognition was not given as the DMDK did not fulfil the other criteria.
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Similar was the situation in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls wherein the DMDK contested all 39 seats in Tamil Nadu on its own and obtained nearly 10 per cent of the votes. But, it could not win a single seat.
In the recent Assembly polls, the DMDK contested in alliance with the AIADMK from 41 seats and won 29, overtaking the DMK in getting the status of the main opposition party in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. It obtained a total of 29,02,813 of the polled votes in the State (7.88 per cent). The vote percentage in the seats contested by the DMDK was a whopping 44.84.
In Puducherry, the EC recognition comes to Mr. Rangasamy's AINRC within three months of its formation.
Chief Minister Rangasamy, who broke away from the Congress, started the AINRC only on February 7 this year and won 15 of 17 Assembly seats contested by his party.
The AINRC polled around 40 per cent votes.
With the EC‘s decision, the number of recognised State parties in Tamil Nadu will go up to four (including the DMK, the AIADMK and the PMK) and in Puducherry to three (the AIADMK and the DMK).