The ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday, March 12, 2024, finalised its constituency allocation exercise with the two Left parties in its alliance, for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. Seat sharing talks with both parties were completed on February 29.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been allotted Madurai (a seat it holds now) as well as Dindigul; while the Communist Party of India has been allotted both seats that it holds now, the Nagapattinam and Tiruppur constituencies.
Madurai is represented by CPI (M)‘s Su. Venkatesan, a winner of the Sahitya Akademi award for his novel Kaval Kottam that traces the history of Madurai. In the 2019 general elections, Dindigul was won by DMK candidate P. Velusamy. The CPI-M had also made an unsuccessful pitch this time, for its other sitting seat, Coimbatore.
CPI(M) state secretary K. Balakrishnan said Dindigul was one of the optional constituencies in the wishlist the party had presented to the DMK. “The DMK candidate in Dindigul, had in 2019 ,won with a margin of over 5 lakh votes. It will be easy for our candidate to win this time,” he said.
The DMK had earlier allotted Ramanthapuram to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and Namakkal to the the Kongunadu Makkal Desiya Katchi (KMDK), both sitting seats. IUML has announced that K. Navas Kani, who won from Ramanathapuram in 2019, will contest again this time.
The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) has been allotted Chidambaram and Villupuram (both reserved constituencies ) that are also sitting seats.
The party is yet to complete constituency identification exercise with the Congress for nine seats in Tamil Nadu, though the Congress has been allotted the lone seat in Puducherry. It has also not identified a constituency as yet for the one seat allotted to the MDMK.
