DMK to focus on booth committees to capture all 39 LS seats

CHENNAI: The ruling DMK is focusing on booth committees to capture all the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu during the 2024 general elections.

For this the party has constituted observers in all the Assembly constituencies. Party president and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin has appointed 234 observers with one observer each in an Assembly constituency.

The observers have been given the herculean task of getting 50,000 new membership from each constituency before the birth anniversary of the former Chief Minister and Stalin's father late Kalaignar Karunanidhi which falls on June 3.

The observers in-charge of each Assembly constituency will have to first study a booth properly and to undertake meetings once in two days with the booth committee members. The number of houses and the number of voters in each house has to be assessed.

The observers will also be responsible for cutting out the double votes and the votes of those who are not in station, and those who have passed away. Also the observers will have to add new voters and those who have shifted their residence into the booth committees that come under the jurisdiction.

The DMK, it may be recalled, won all but one seat in the 2019 general elections with the lone winner from the AIADMK front being, O.P. Raveendranathan, son of former Chief Minister, O.Panneerselvam from Theni Lok Sabha constituency. With the AIADMK infighting at its peak and OPS being expelled from the party, the DMK feels that the Theni seat could also be easily wrested.

A senior leader of the DMK while speaking to IANS said, "The setting of target of 50,000 new members in each Assembly constituency is not workable. The target should be around 10,000 and observers will seriously work to achieve it. 50,000 is never possible as recently the party youth wing had undertaken a massive enrolment drive and had given membership to 10,000 people. The women's wing of the party has also given membership to 20,000 people in an Assembly constituency recently. This makes the task of observers herculean and almost impossible."

He, however, said that the appointment of party observers will help decentralisation of the election process thus leading to more cohesiveness and better management.