Chennai: DMDK’s years long aspiration of entering the parliament is set to become a reality as the party signed an agreement with DMK for a Rajya Sabha seat on Tuesday.DMDK treasurer L K Sudhish, who signed the agreement with DMK President MK Stalin, said the nomination formalities would be completed on Wednesday. Sudhish is likely to be the RS candidate of the party, DMDK sources said. Assurance of a RS seat by DMK was one of the reasons for the DMDK to join the ruling party’s alliance. the DMDK, which had allied with AIADMK in the past, had a rift with the opposition party due to alleged denial of RS seat. DMDK joined the DMK-led front on February 19, a day after the Election Commission of India announced biennial elections to 37 Rajya Sabha seats across the country, including 6 from Tamil Nadu. The agreement signed with DMK said that talks would be held with DMDK and the number of seats to be allotted for the party would be decided. ” In the next round of talks to be held within a week, we will discuss how many assembly constituencies would be allotted to DMDK and which are those constituencies,” Sudhish said.MEanwhile, district secretaries conveyed to party general secretary Premallatha Vijaykanth that, irrespective of the number of constituencies allotted, the party should contest under its own banner rather than in DMK’s Rising Sun symbol.The demand stems from the party’s performance in the 2021 Assembly election, after which it lost its recognised party status and, consequently, its ‘war drum’ (Murasu) symbol.
