Jayalalithaa hands back 30 seats to allies

CHENNAI: After hurriedly withdrawing its first list of 160 candidates following an outcry among allies that AIADMK had grabbed their favourite seats, J Jayalalithaa on Monday released her second and ‘‘ final’’ list, returning 30 constituencies back to allies while ruling out any more seats to ally Vijayakanth in the wake of Vaikoled MDMK’s exit from the alliance .

The identification of seats to be contested by DMDK, the second largest party in the alliance, dragged for three days with its leadership learnt to have expressed unhappiness with more than 13 seats allotted to it. But the issue was sorted out with Vijayakanth holding talks with his senior party colleagues Panruti S Ramachandran and L K Sudhish, explaining them the rationale behind the allocation of constituencies . AIADMK also released the list of 41 constituencies allotted to DMDK.

AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa will kick off her party’s campaign on March 24 from Tiruchi. Her aggressive allies, who even threatened to probe the option of forming a third front, disrupted her campaign plan, which was scheduled to begin on March 17 but was postponed due to confusion over allocation of constituencies. DMDK, CPM and CPI had protested that all their winnable seats were usurped by their major ally.

Jayalalithaa will campaign for 18 days for the April 13 assembly elections, setting her earlier schedule back by four days. She has sacrificed 30 seats from her old list, mostly in southern and northern Tamil Nadu. Of the 30 constituencies, she has given 13 to DMDK. Interestingly, DMDK grabbed only one seat (Virugambakkam) in Chennai.