The Tamil Nadu Congress Committee will hold a meeting of its district secretaries on Tuesday and discuss the developments regarding the indirect elections to the post of mayors and chairpersons of municipalities.
Last week, the TNCC planned to seek a few Mayoral posts from its alliance leader, the DMK, when it seemed like there would be direct elections. But with an ordinance being issued, the party is discussing the way forward, though TNCC president K.S. Alagiri told The Hindu that “we won’t seek more seats than what is necessary”.
Sources in the TNCC said everything will be decided only after the polls are announced, which they say looks like a bleak possibility.
“We might ask for one or two mayoral seats. Indirect polls is a disadvantage because in direct polls, we can have our own candidate to contest on our symbol and the alliance could help us win. Under this current system, we won’t have too many councillors to enable us to elect our own mayor,” a leader said.
Another disadvantage of the indirect polls for the TNCC is that they cannot seek a higher percentage of seats for wards, the leader said.
However, another leader from Chennai said when indirect polls were held under the DMK regime, the Congress got 25% of seats and two Mayoral posts.
“Whether they will hold the elections itself is doubtful. The only window they have now is December during the school holidays. Once you miss that, the next one is only in April. Whether they will hold it in April is doubtful, because they will be focussing on the Assembly elections,” the leader said.
Mr. Alagiri said seats sharing would not be a problem since they have been able to thrash out all alliance related issues quickly and to everyone’s satisfaction.
“There’s an understanding within the alliance. Whoever has a chance of victory in some seats, will be given those seats. It won’t be a problem,” he said.
