Stalin to chair dist secys’ meet on local body elections today

The meeting would be held at DMK headquarters Anna Arivalayam, where the party would deliberate on its election strategy, especially seat sharing with the allies. The high command is expected to instruct the district secretaries concerned to finalise the numbers with their counterparts in alliance parties locally in the nine districts, as was done during the rural local body polls for other districts earlier in the previous AIADMK regime. 

With the party in power, the DMK district secretaries, some of whom are ministers, are likely to renew their election strategy for the nine districts. Though the party was not in power during the earlier phase of the polls, it had won a majority of the seats in rural local body polls held for the rest of the districts in the previous AIADMK regime. The Supreme Court has set mid-September as deadline for completing rural local body elections in the nine left out districts. If information spilling out of the DMK camp were something to go by, the meeting could also discuss the ensuing urban local body polls, which ruling DMK has proposed to complete before end of the year. 

Dr R Mahendran of Coimbatore has been appointed joint secretary of the DMK IT wing. An announcement made by DMK general secretary Duraimurugan in this regard on Saturday said the office bearers already appointed by the high command for the IT wing would work along with Mahendran. 

He had quit actor Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) shortly after the Assembly election.