Chennai: A day after DMK president M K Stalin chose not to respond to questions on his bypoll strategy, triggering speculations that DMK might boycott the polls, the principal opposition party sprung a surprise on Wednesday by becoming the first party to name candidates for Maduranthakam and Dharapuram assembly byelection scheduled for Oct 6.Stalin announced former MLA and party legal wing joint secretary I Paranthamen, who was denied a ticket in the recent assembly elections, as the candidate for Maduranthakam, and advocate S Suganya as the candidate for Dharapuram.DMK general secretary Duraimurugan said he was confident of the party’s victory in the two seats. However, it seems victory would be an uphill task given the challenges the party is up against.To begin with, DMK has lost its major allies and is virtually on its own now, except for support from DMDK. The party was unable to win the two seats in 2026 even when it had the backing of Congress, MDMK, VCK, IUML and the Left parties. Now that these parties are in the TVK front, winning the two seats would be tougher than before.Besides, these two constituencies are considered traditionally weak segments for DMK. In the assembly election held on April 23, AIADMK’s Marakatham Kumaravel (who has switched over to TVK) got 69,284 votes in Maduranthakam, followed by TVK’s Ezhil Katherine who got 62,090 votes. DMK’s S Amulu Ponmalar came third with 59,848 votes.In Dharapuram, DMK could only emerge as a distant second. While AIADMK’s P Sathyabama won with 81,100 votes, DMK’s T Indirani secured 64,373. Here TVK ended up in the third place with 46,000-odd votes.If the ruling TVK, which has grown stronger in the past three months, would mount a tough fight, AIADMK is expected to pose a bigger challenge as the party would want to reclaim the two seats. Since these two are reserved segments, the inclusion of VCK in TVK front is likely to give the ruling party additional ammunition. On the other hand, PMK’s vanniyar votes would help AIADMK, leaving DMK to scout for support.Duraimurugan said the notion that bypolls generally favoured the ruling party was incorrect. “DMK won in two bypolls in 1983 when AIADMK, led by M G Ramachandran, was in power. We will repeat history this time,’’ he said.Paranthamen said people were fed up of TVK within 100 days and hence, they would back DMK.
