AIADMK waits for ministers to start campaign

This follows former minister VS Vijay convening a meeting of party functionaries of a specific caste without the knowledge of either Veeramani or M Moorthy the district treasurer. The news leaked when a former area secretary and councillor KR Pandian told Vijay in no uncertain terms what he thought of such behaviour.

Party workers’ ire stems from the fact that Vijay a former district secretary returned to the AIADMK after a short sojourn with the AMMK and hence now only an ordinary member. That an ordinary member had the gall to undertake such a meeting irritates grass root workers.

It may be recalled that machinations of the middle level functionaries, who took NDA candidate AC Shanmugam for a ride in the run up to the April 18 poll by demanding cash for everything resulted in Shanmugam complaining to Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami. After the complaint was found to be true, Palaniswami was about to initiate action when the August 5 polls were announced resulting in the issue being put on the back burner.

Shanmugam himself was peeved saying, “I am the only person who is fighting thrice for the same parliamentary constituency.” He lost to AIADMK’s B Senguttuvan in 2014, while the April 18 poll was countermanded. He is now contesting the August 5 election.

Highly placed party sources revealed that Ministers KC Veeramani, P Thangamani and SP Velumani will be overall in-charge of the constituency while their supporters will be responsible for the six Assembly constituencies unlike the last time when Veeramani was in charge of 5 constituencies and VS Vijay was in charge of Vellore constituency.

“Cadre are eager to know who will be put in charge as only then will campaigning start in earnest,” said a functionary on condition of anonymity. “We expect the Ministers to nominate 5 persons for each constituency as in-charges who in turn will allocate workers for every 200 voters. This will ensure transparency and also make the job easier,” he added.