The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam opted to field their respective district secretaries as candidates for the by-elections to the Tiruvarur Assembly constituency, scheduled to be held on January 28.
The battle lines will become clearer when the AIADMK announces its candidate, in all probability, on Saturday.
The DMK Tiruvarur district secretary Poondi K. Kalaivanan is the brother of Poondi Kalaiselvan who was murdered in 2007. Mr. Kalaivanan was subsequently made the district organiser of DMK. He, later, contested successfully in the inner-party elections and took over as DMK's district unit secretary. Mr. Kalaivanan had also served as a member of the District Panchayat.
He is considered to have played a key role in mobilising grass root workers when the late party president M. Karunanidhi contested and recorded big wins from Tiruvarur in 2011 and 2016.
As soon as his candidature was announced by the party, the DMK cadre got into a celebratory mood bursting crackers and distributing sweets to the public at the Tiruvarur bus stand.
Kamaraj is AMMK candidate
Earlier in the day, the AMMK, after a State-level advisory meeting at Thanjavur, announced S. Kamaraj, its Tiruvarur district unit secretary as the candidate.
AMMK Deputy General Secretary said the candidature of Mr. Kamaraj had been approved by the party general secretary V.K. Sasikala.
The AMMK will romp home victorious with an even higher margin than the outcome of the R.K. Nagar by-election, Mr. Dhinakaran said. "The AMMK will prove that Tiruvarur is Amma's (late Chief Minister Jayalalithaa) stronghold," he said.
Mr.Kamaraj who started off as the president of AIADMK student wing in Needamangalam town, was the party's district unit secretary from 2006 to 2008.
He was removed from the post of Needamangalam Panchayat Union Chairman he held for a month during 2011 when Ms.Sasikala family fell out of the favour with the late AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa, but Mr. Kamaraj was retained in the party.
As the AIADMK candidate in Mannargudi constituency in the 2016 elections, Mr. Kamaraj lost to DMK's T.R.B. Raja, by a margin of over 10,000 votes.
Nomination
Meanwhile, A. Noor Mohammed, a resident of Coimbatore district, filed his nomination as an Independent candidate on Friday. Two other Independents had filed their papers on Thursday.
