After weeks of dilly dallying, Vijayakanth’s DMDK has officially announced that he will ally with the People’s Welfare Alliance. 'Captain' as he is called will also be the Chief Ministerial candidate of the alliance.
While the DMDK will contest in 124 seats, the PWF will contest in 110 seats.
The PWF, consists mainly of four parties- Vaiko’s MDMK, VCK, CPI and CPI (M). Leaders of the alliance who have been actively campaigning all over the state had met Vijayakanth in December 2015, but the DMDK leader had not given any assurance then.
MDMK’s Vaiko, VCK leader Thirumavalavan, CPI(M) leader G Ramakrishnan and a battery of leaders called on Vijayakanth on Wednesday morning at his Koyambedu office in Chennai.
The announcement has come on a day when BJP chief Amit Shah is landing in Chennai to deliberate on election strategy and candidates. The BJP had been in talks with Vijayakanth and had been constantly hinting that there was possibility of some electoral understanding with the DMDK.
The DMK too had been actively wooing the DMDK, and at one point of time, the party had been confident of forming an alliance with the DMDK.
The DMDK contested the 2006 assembly election across 232 constituencies without any alliance partner and got around 10 percent of vote-share. In the subsequent 2009 Lok Sabha election, the DMDK contested across 234 assembly constituencies and won 10.3 percent of vote-share. In 2011 elections, DMDK contested in 41 constituencies as part of an AIADMK alliance and won about 29 seats and became the opposition party in the Tamil Nadu assembly,