Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

DMK organisational poll enters decisive phase

By R.K. Radhakrishnan

CHENNAI March 22. The DMK organisational elections entered a crucial phase on Friday, when hundreds of aspirants queued up at the party headquarters here to collect nomination forms for panchayat union secretary and town secretary. These secretaries form the electoral college for the post of all-powerful district secretary.

This is the decisive third phase of the internal elections. At the completion of the election of district secretaries, the final phase - poll in the headquarters will be taken up. Selection of a new leadership will be completed in about four months.

``These elections have been held for over 50 years. Earlier the exercise was held once in three years. Now the elections are held every five years. This is the largest such exercise in inner-party democracy,'' said a senior functionary.

When the process is completed at the district level, there will be 100-150 elected functionaries in each district, depending on its population and size.

The elections are important as the DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, has sent out signals that he will rather oversee the party as a patriarch and not hold any formal position. But the rest of the leadership does not appear comfortable with the idea.

The party has announced a `downsizing' of districts from 50 to ``equal the number of revenue districts''.

Prominence to women

Also, women will find greater prominence at various levels, right from the unit to the headquarters. These two initiatives will test the leadership's abilities, as it attempts to balance individual aspirations with the party's stated objectives. And, at the end of the whole process, there may be some indications of the future direction the DMK and its leadership will take.

Party leaders pointed out that despite the DMK's poll reverses and defeat in the byelections, there were multiple candidates for the party posts and the elections were closely fought.

In such a vast and complicated exercise, there was bound to be bad blood in some instances and the issues were sorted out at appropriate levels of the leadership.

``Even now, for the crucial part, our leader (Mr. Karunanidhi) is not in town. But everything is going on smoothly. There are returning officers and observers at all levels to sort out any problem,'' a leader said.

The election process, begun early last year, started with a membership drive and meandered through the better part of the year.

In view of the byelections, the party had to pull out some leaders from the organisational poll arena for the poll work.

The party has already completed the election process at the branch (village) and town panchayat levels.

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