The ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has set the ball rolling for Lok Sabha elections, as the party invited its members who would like to contest the polls to receive applications. In a statement, AIADMK Coordinator O Panneerselvam (Deputy Chief Minister) and Joint Coordinator K Palaniswami (Chief Minister), said the application forms will be available from February 4 to February 10.
Those seeking an election ticket can pay a sum of Rs 25,000 towards application cost, EPS and OPS said. The AIADMK won 37 of the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, under the leadership of late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. The AIADMK had already announced committees to hold seat sharing talks with alliance partners and to prepare manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The seat sharing team will consist of veterans K P Munusamy, Vaithilingam, JCD Prabhakar and Ministers Thangamani and Velumani. While the seven-member manifesto team will consist of C Ponnaiyan, Natham Viswanathan, Minister D Jayakumar, Semmalai, Minister C V Shanmugam, Manoj Pandian and Rabi Bernard. Another seven-member team has been formed to regulate election campaign works. It has Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker M Thambidurai, Ministers Dindigul Srinivasan and K A Sengottaiyan, B Valarmathi, Gokula Indira, Venugopal and Vaigai Selvan as its members.
Recently, the main opposition DMK too named seat-sharing committee and manifesto committee. Party general secretary K. Anbazhagan announced that DMK treasurer Duraimurugan will be the leader of the committee to hold seat-sharing talks.