AIADMK constitutes four committees for Lok Sabha election preparation

Chennai: Tamil Nadu’s principal Opposition party, AIADMK, on Monday constituted four committees to hold seat-sharing talks with alliance partners, prepare the manifesto, and coordinate campaign and publicity for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Party general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami announced the committees despite there being no clarity on the party's alliance partners after it snapped ties with the BJP and quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in September last year. Except Puratchi Bharatham, no other party that fought the 2019 and 2021 elections in an alliance with the AIADMK has made their stand clear on whether they will continue to stay with the BJP or the Dravidian party.

The five-member committee on seat-sharing consists of party’s deputy general secretary K P Munusamy, and former ministers Dindigul C Sreenivasan, P Thangamani, S P Velumani, and P Benjamin.

Three other committees – manifesto preparation, election campaign, and election publicity – have ten members each with former ministers and senior leaders of the party finding place in them.

The constitution of the four committees comes three days after the ruling DMK announced three panels to prepare the party for the April-May elections.

The Lok Sabha elections will serve as an acid test for Palaniswami and the AIADMK as the party hasn’t tasted electoral success after the death of its charismatic leader J Jayalalithaa in 2016. The foremost task before EPS, who took the bold decision of snapping the ties with the BJP, is to stitch a formidable alliance under AIADMK’s leadership and ensure a win for the party.

“We have already announced that we will form a grand alliance under AIADMK’s leadership and the work towards that has already begun. These committees will begin their work very soon to prepare the party battle-ready,” a senior party leader told DH.

Besides anti-incumbency against the DMK government and its core support base, the AIADMK is also banking on minority votes to end its defeat streak as it believes Muslims and Christians will vote for the party this time as it is no more in an alliance with the BJP. In 2019 and 2021, Muslims and Christians voted en masse for the DMK, which had allied with the Congress and Left parties.

Former ministers Natham R Viswanathan, C Ponnaiyan, D Jayakumar, C Ve Shanmugam, S Semmalai, P Valarmathi, O S Manian, R B Udhayakumar, Vaigai Chelvan, and Pollachi V Jayaraman are members of the manifesto committee, a statement issued by Palaniswami said.

The election campaign committee will consist of former Lok Sabha deputy speaker M Thambidurai, K A Sengottaiyan, Sellur K Raju, former Speaker P Dhanapal, and N R Sivapathy among others, while the election publicity committee consists of C Vijayabaskar, Kadambur C Raju, K T Rajenthra Balaji, V R Raj Sathyan, and V M Rajalakshmi among others.