RK Nagar gets busy as by-poll heat is felt

CHENNAI: Radhakrishna Nagar (RK Nagar) in Chennai is feeling the VIP status. Political leaders, who never turned up in the constituency forlong,havereappearedwithpromises As A Bypoll to ill THE seat HAS BEEN announced for Dec.21.

The election in the seat, once held by late chief minister J. Jayalalithaa, will show which way the wind is now blowing, with the ruling Anna DMK staying divided and the main opposition DMK on the ascend.

The DMK candidate, Marudu Ganesh, a local lawyer and activist, is already meeting voters in RK Nagar. He was candidate in the bypoll that was set for April 21 but was cancelled after ADMK was caught piling up money to pay voters.

ADMK will choose its candidate on Monday when the leadership will meet. With the reunited factions of Chief Minister Edappadi K.

Palaniswami and his deputy O. Pannerselvam seen IGHTING openly For spoils, questions have been raised about its winnability.

E. Madhusudanan, a veteran ADMK LEADER with some Inluence In RK NAGAR, was a candidate oft hep anne rs elv am group in April and is expected to be nominated on Monday as ADMK candidate, especially because his group had been complaining of being sidelined.

TTV Dinakaran was the Palaniswami group’s candidate in April and was accused of large-scale bribery. He and his aunt, Sasikala who is in jail, were both expelled from the party recently.

However, Dinakaran has announced he will indeed contest and claim he is the party candidate.

That would make two faction candidates From THE ADMK though THE OFICIAL Group now keeps the Two Leaves symbol. A third entrant who could take away some ADMK votes is Deepa Jayakumar, the niece of Jayalalithaa who closely resembles her aunt. She has formed her own party.

Among other parties, Congress has announced it will support DMK and VCK is also expected to do so, while the two Communist parties also remain in the DMK alliance.

The discord in the ADMK is far from over. On Saturday, the Pannerselvam group aired a complaint that their leader, the deputy chief minister, was not invited to a party event.

An uninvited Panneerselvam stayed away from the event in Madurai, but showed up at another party function in Raman a th a pu ram and used the opportunity to dish out a lecture on the need for unity.