Amma’s b’day surprise: 9 MPs fall from grace

The AIADMK’s list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, released on the occasion of party general secretary and Tamil Nad...

The AIADMK’s list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, released on the occasion of party general secretary and Tamil Nadu CM J. Jayalalithaa’s 56th birthday, was full of surprises.

The chief minister has denied tickets to nine of her party’s 11 members of the dissolved House, while she has brought in 29 new faces, most of them district secretaries, to contest the coming polls. Of the 11, only T.T.V. Dinakaran, nephew of Sasikala Natarajan, from Periakulam and S. Murugesan of Tenkasi (reserved seat) have been spared.

The women, too, have been given a short shrift. The AIADMK, which had fielded the maximum number of women candidates in the 2001 Assembly elections, has now decided to put up only two women candidates, noted lawyer and Wakf Board Chairman Bader Sayeed at South Chennai and Polur town panchayat president R. Rajalakshmi Rajan at Vandavasi.

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Sitting MPs denied tickets include P.H. Pandian (Tirunelveli), T.M. Selvaganapathy (Salem), K. Malaisamy (Ramanathapuram), Dr V. Saroja (Rasipuram), M. Chinnasamy (Karur), C. Srinivasan (Dindigul), P. Kumarasamy (Palani), K.K. Kaliyappan (Gobichettipalayam) and Dalit Ezhilmalai (Trichy).

One of the old faces in the list is former Rajya Sabha member O.S. Manian, now fielded from Mayiladuthurai, where he could be facing senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar. Central Chennai district AIADMK secretary and Slum Clearance Board Chairman N. Balaganga, nominated for that constituency, is one of the few party strongmen in the fray.