Vellore PMK petitions Collector, SP for protection from DMK MLAs

The ruling DMK’s aggressive moves to weed out rivals from contesting in the ensuing urban local body polls to ensure total victory for the party received a setback when PMK functionaries petitioned the Vellore Collector and SP and named two DMK MLAs who were behind such moves, on Monday.

Rival candidates in many wards had their nominations rejected during scrutiny without being assigned any reason. This lead to PMK Vellore east district president Venketesan, secretary KL Ilavazhagan and state vice president and former union minister NT Shanmugam leading a delegation of all their 25 candidates to the SPs office.

In their petition, they stated that Anaicut MLA AP Nandakumar and Vellore MLA P Karthikeyan contacted PMK candidates over phone and directly wanted them to withdraw their nominations. Citing a specific instance RT Parasuraman contesting in ward 24 said, “I was called around 10.30 pm on Saturday and asked to withdraw failing which I was told that my ambulance service (RTP Ambulance service) would not be allowed to function.”

Nandakumar in a tweet replied that Parasuraman approached the DMK seeking a seat as he knew victory was possible only if he was with the Dravidian major. “We explained to him that the seat was already allotted and I have evidence to prove this.”

The PMK petition requested police protection for the candidates and action against those who indulged in such threats. However, what was surprising was that the PMK failed to mention the name of a senior DMK functionary who was said to be behind it.