CHENNAI: Raising questions about party chief Edappadi K Palaniswami’s leadership, the AIADMK was pushed behind its estranged ally, the BJP, in one-third of the Lok Sabha constituencies it contested from.
What is even more humiliating for the Opposition major is that it was at the fourth position, below even Seeman’s NTK, in four of them.
Out of the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone one in Puducherry, the Dravidian party fielded candidates at 33 constituencies, while the remaining seven went to its allies. Of these, the party nominees suffered the ignominy of being reduced to the fourth position in four of them – Kanniyakumari, Tirunelveli, Vellore, and Puducherry Union Territory.
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That the party, which was in power in Tamil Nadu for two consecutive terms from 2011 to 2021, was below NTK is sure to rankle the leadership, especially so because the latter contested on its own while the AIADMK had three alliance partners, DMDK, Puthiya Tamilagam and SDPI.
The seats where it came third are Chennai South, Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Madurai, Nilgiris, Ramanathapuram, and Theni.
Earlier, at a closed-door meeting convened soon after the polling was over, Palaniswami had given a dressing down to party leaders for what he termed as lethargic campaign work by them.