Elected DMK chief again, Stalin urges cadres to ensure victory in 2024 LS polls

DMK leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has urged office bearers to take a vow to work towards ensuring a landslide victory for the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and emerge as a force to reckon with on the national platform.

Addressing party cadres in his acceptance speech after he was unanimously re-elected as the DMK’s president at the party’s general council meeting in Chennai on Sunday, Stalin said they should ensure that the party wins all the 39 Parliamentary constituencies in the state and the lone seat in neighbouring Puducherry as well.

Exuding confidence that the DMK would win all the 40 Parliamentary segments, he tasked party functionaries to begin work right away to set up booth committees to face the polls and complete the work in two months.

He also warned party members to be wary of alleged false propaganda that the BJP or the AIADMK may launch ahead of the General Elections.

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“The BJP is trying to do politics by stoking religious and spiritual sentiments,” he claimed. Since the people of Tamil Nadu have never mixed politics with spiritualism, the “BJP is suffocating”.

“The AIADMK is a divided house, riddled with factional feud, and the national party is trying to use it to its benefit. Do not forget that the BJP would go to any extent of cheap politics to win the next LS polls,” he alleged.

The DMK chief told the party functionaries that the AIADMK and BJP would try to insult the party through a campaign of lies in the run up to the Parliamentary polls. “We have to face it through our welfare measures for the people.”

He also asked party functionaries to exercise restraint in speech and action. “I wake up wishing that our men should not have created a new problem. Often this thought renders me sleepless,” the chief minister said.

After he took over as party chief in 2018, the party has won all the polls, be it the civic polls to rural or urban local bodies and elections to the state Assembly (2021) and the Lok Sabha (2019), he said adding this trend of continuing electoral victories must be sustained at all times.

However, he warned party people against slackness and underlined the need to work together with a team spirit. “The party should win hands down the next state Assembly polls (2026) as well,” he said.

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“After the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa in 2016, the AIADMK is in a shambles and does not have a strong leadership,” he said in a veiled attack against the principal opposition party’s interim chief, K Palaniswami. “The AIADMK has diminished into four factions,” Stalin said, which is seen as a reference to Palaniswami, O Panneerselvam, T T V Dhinakaran and V K Sasikala.

Earlier, in the newly constituted general council, which held its meeting in Chennai, the DMK declared Stalin as elected unopposed to the top party post.

(With inputs from agencies)