In ‘win-all 20’ strategy, AIADMK wants at least 8 in kitty to get majority

The meeting was chaired by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and they urged the functionaries to win all the 20 seats and emphasised that in the worst case scenario, the ruling party needs at least eight seats retained so that the government is not short of a simple majority, which is 118 seats in the house of 234 constituencies. The AIADMK currently claims a strength of 113 MLAs.

“The number of MLAs on our side has reduced due to the disqualification, we should not become the reason for the fall of Amma government. This is a do-or-die battle for all of us,” both EPS and OPS told the AIADMK office bearers and district secretaries.

Party joint convenor R Vaithiligam in his address said, “The traitors (Sasikala family) and enemies (DMK first family) are waiting to trounce the Amma government and this is a crucial time for us to prove our strength. Work hard and ensure that new voters are added to electoral rolls and reach out to the mass.”

“The organisers for all the 20 constituencies participated and we were briefed about the booth committee work and campaign strategy that has to be adopted,” said former MLA Ku. Sreenivasan. Bad times started for us in 2016 due to the demise of Amma and now we are slowly settling down. The year 2019 is important for us to save the party and we are confident of winning these bypolls, Sreenivasan told DTNext.

Meanwhile, disqualified AIADMK MLA and Dhinakaran supporter Thanga Tamilselvan said there are chances for the by-election to the 20 constituencies to be held ony when the Lok Sabha polls happen in 2019, he told reporters.