AIADMK announces candidates for 4 assembly seats

Chennai: The ruling AIADMK on Tuesday announced its candidates for bypolls to four Assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu scheduled on May 19.

Party Coordinator O Panneerselvam and Joint Coordinator K Palaniswami said in a statement that the decision to field the candidates to Sulur, Aravakurichi, Tirupprankundram and Ottapidaram (SC) was taken by the party's Parliamentary Board.

Palaniswami is the Chief Minister of the state while Panneerselvam is his deputy.

The two leaders named VP Kandasamy (Sulur), VV Senthilnathan (Aravakurichi), S Muniyandi (Tirupparankundram) and P Mohan to Oddapidaram as the party's nominees.

Mohan is a former MLA while the others hold various party posts.

Of these four seats, by-polls to Tirupparankundram and Sulur were necessitated due to the death of their sitting AIADMK legislators.

Aravakurichi and Ottapidaram fell vacant following the disqualification of AIADMK MLAs representing them, V Senthil Balaji and R Sundararaj, respectively, after they were part of the 18 ruling party MLAs who revolted against Palaniswami for merging his led faction with that of Panneerselvam then.

On April 18, bypolls to 18 Assembly segments in the state were held along with elections to 38 Lok Sabha seats.

The Election Commission of India had recently announced by-polls to the said four Assembly seats, thus covering all the 22 vacant segments.

The outcome of the bypolls would decide the continuance of the two-year-old Palaniswami-led government as it would have to win a substantial number of seats to stay in power.

In the present Assembly, the AIADMK has a strength of 113 members, minus the Speaker. It needs a simple majority of 117 to continue in the 234-member Tamil Nadu Assembly.