At Udanpirappey Vaa meeting, Stalin lends ear to grassroots workers; some get an earful

CHENNAI: Armed with granular details of each of the 234 Assembly constituencies in the State which were divided into four categories ranging from definitely winnable to difficult, Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin held one-on-one meetings with lower level party functionaries on Friday to understand the challenges that lay ahead of the party in retaining power in the upcoming 2026 elections.

Anxious party functionaries who attended the meeting, and those awaiting the rendezvous with the leader in the days to come, seem to have heaved a sigh of relief after it became evident that Stalin lent ears to their telltales in earnest.

From internal bickering to overreach of new regional bosses and disgruntlement of local party units, and above all, social engineering arithmetic, Stalin and his team, including organising secretary RS Bharathi, his predecessor TKS Elangovan, and deputy organising secretary ‘Anbagam’ Kalai, elicited the views of the functionaries from three constituencies, who were instructed to come for the meeting on Friday.

Each of them had two to six minutes to express their views to the leadership team. DMK insiders said Stalin and team had a report of each participant, including their communal profile, and raised specific questions regarding the problems in their jurisdiction. For instance, functionaries from Villupuram constituency were asked to respond to the alleged cold war between former minister K Ponmudy and newly appointed district secretary R Lakshmanan.

A DMK senior unwilling to be quoted disclosed that a town secretary from Chidambaram, who is close to Agriculture Minister MRK Panneerselvam, who is also one of the eight zonal heads, was told to pull up his socks in his terrain.

A couple of town panchayat and union functionaries were also asked to explain the alleged acrimony between them and local functionaries belonging to another community, which is in the majority in the constituency. Some of the functionaries reportedly requested the leader to back them with resources to manage the impending poll work.

Explaining the rationale behind the choice of constituencies, the senior leader said the high command has categorised the 234 Assembly constituencies into definitely winnable, winnable, challenging, and difficult constituencies. The order of precedence of constituencies for the “Udanpirappey Vaa” meeting was largely based on this categorisation.

Though Stalin’s line of questioning inspired confidence among the participating functionaries, a degree of inhibition is understood to have persisted among the functionaries over frankly airing views against influential regional satraps like minister and district secretary Panneerselvam, under whose party district jurisdiction Chidambaram constituency fell.

Meanwhile, Stalin also held a virtual meeting on Friday with the eight zonal heads about the progress of their meetings and preparations for the booth-level poll works.