Vijayakanth looks to revive party in strongholds

Undaunted by the new challenges, the actor-politician had announced that his party would face the local body elections alone and prove its strength. “In film career, Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan can be seniors to me, but in politics they are juniors,” he had declared. A good show in the civic polls would make it an attractive alliance option for the oncoming Parliament elections and the actor is concentrating on areas where his party had a strong base in the past-Villupuram, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and Virudhunagar.

He made his presence felt by mobilising a good crowd on January 4 for a protest demanding the payment of arrears amount owned by sugar mills for sugarcane farmers at Villupuram, a district where his party showed a vote share of 10 to 16 per cent in the 2009 Parliament elections.

The party’s deputy secretary B Parthasarathy said, “Captain is on the field taking up people’s issues which were not solved by the AIADMK and the DMK. A large number of farmers attended the Villupuram protest and thanked our leader for fighting for their cause. Besides, at Sivakasi, our leader led the agitation against banning of crackers and a large number of workers gathered there.”

The party had a good base in Chennai’s neighbourhood of Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts. But, in the 2016 Assembly elections, the PMK took the third position in seven of the 10 seats in Tiruvallur and secured 1,94,660 votes. The DMDK along with its alliance parties had got 1,31,793 votes and was in the third position in only three places. In the 2009 Parliament elections, the first after the delimitation exercise, the DMDK polled between 11 and 17 per cent votes in the Assembly segments in the district. Vijayakanth’s wife Premalatha will take the stage in the protest against bus fare hike in this former stronghold.

In Kancheepuram district too, the perception that DMDK is a strong party was shattered as the PWA-DMDK alliance secured just 1,45,549 votes and trailed behind the PMK in eight of the 11 constituencies. The PMK obtained a total of 1,80,003 votes. Vijayakanth himself would lead the protest in this district at Pallavaram. Virudhunagar was one of the strong areas of the DMDK and the protest against cracker ban was organised in Sivakasi on January 21.