Ensure win of DMK front in all 40 seats: Stalin

In a statement declaring that DMK would contest in 20 constituencies, Stalin said the seat sharing deals with the allies were clinched through transparent talks by appointing teams, as did his father and former party chief M Karunanidhi.

“Talks were not held behind the scene in some secret palace of an anonymous person after dusk. Talks were not held in luxury hotel in secrecy. We did not plan to somehow clinch the deal and bring allies at the nick of time to the dais of a rally. We did not enact dramas like erecting and removing cut outs,” Stalin said, apparently, hitting out the way alliance talks panned out in the AIADMK camp.

Drawing a parallel between the statements made by the AIADMK and PMK leaders about the ruling BJP, the DMK president said the people were ridiculing the “alliance of compulsion” and “unholy alliance” and he would dish out more such alliance glitches during the campaign. Stating that there was still some hope that Election Commission would act impartially, Stalinsaid the Commission should hold the bypolls along with Parliamentary polls if it were to safeguard the faith in it.

Appealing to his cadre to engage wholeheartedly in the poll works, Stalin referred to its tally of 20 seats and said, “DMK is also contesting in the other 20 seats. That was the alliance spirit taught to them by their leader Karunanidhi. Candidates fielded against us in the 40 constituencies are anti-people rulers. Not one of them should be allowed space in any constituency.”