Coimbatore: In a setback to DMK in Mettupalayam, former high-level executive committee member T R Shanmuga Sundaram resigned from the party and filed his nomination as an independent candidate on Saturday. The move comes after the party leadership denied him a ticket for the upcoming assembly elections.Shanmuga Sundaram, a prominent businessman from Karamadai, had narrowly lost the Mettupalayam seat in the previous election by a margin of 2,456 votes. Expecting a second chance, he had been actively carrying out welfare works and election groundwork in the constituency. However, the DMK leadership instead chose Kavitha Kalyanasundaram, wife of Karamadai north union secretary S M T Kalyanasundaram, as their candidate. The announcement led to high drama as Shanmuga Sundaram’s supporters gathered at his residence to protest the decision, demanding a change in candidate. A video of an emotional Shanmuga Sundaram breaking down in front of his cadres recently went viral on social media. Despite a personal intervention by chief minister M K Stalin during his visit to Coimbatore on Thursday, Shanmuga Sundaram remained firm on his decision to contest, citing strong winning prospects. In his resignation letter to the chief minister, he stated he was leaving the party for “personal reasons.” Shortly after, he arrived at the tahsildar’s office with his family and supporters to submit his nomination to the returning officer. Mettupalayam has remained an AIADMK stronghold since 2001. The incumbent AIADMK candidate, O K Chinnaraj, has won the seat consecutively in 2006, 2011, and 2016. Political observers suggest that with the DMK fielding a newcomer and Shanmuga Sundaram splitting the party’s traditional vote bank, the AIADMK currently holds a distinct advantage in the constituency. In the 2016 assembly election, Shanmuga Sundaram contested the Mettupalayam constituency under the Tamil Maanila Congress as part of the Makkal Nala Kootani alliance. He later joined the DMK.
