Stalin sets Mission-200 for DMK, launches campaign to reject AIADMK

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president MK Stalin has announced ‘Mission-200’, setting a landslide victory in the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections as the party’s target. Stalin set the benchmark while addressing senior leaders and thousands of party functionaries in the DMK headquarters in Chennai on Sunday.

“We are not fighting only to win 117 seats—the half-way mark in the 234 Assembly-- but we must aim for 200 seats and more. We shouldn’t have one seat below that number. We shouldn’t even lose an inch,” Stalin said. The DMK has been out of power for ten years in the state.

The DMK on Sunday also launched another campaign titled, “We reject ADMK”, for which 1,600 party leaders will conduct 16,000 gram sabha meetings from December 23 to January 10 with the message that ‘AIADMK is lacking in governance’ in several sectors such as education and agriculture.

The ruling party was founded as Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK) and was later renamed All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).

The leaders will quote from a document which the DMK calls a ‘charge-sheet’ against the government, which includes issues such as student suicides related to the National-Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test and the police firing on anti-Sterlite protestors in Thoothukudi in 2018. A website has been launched for people to mark their ‘rejection’ of the AIADMK government. Poll strategizing firm, Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), which the DMK has roped in for the elections said that the site has crossed fifty-thousand rejections by Sunday 4pm.

DMK leaders including Udhayanidhi Stalin and Kanimozhi are already on the ground on a 75-day campaign to highlight 10 years of alleged ‘AIADMK misrule’.

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Stalin, who has been campaigning virtually so far due to the Covid-19 pandemic, announced that he will hit the campaign trail in the first week of January. “We will win but there are multiple forces that will not make it easy for us,” said Stalin. “Some people are forced to launch parties to prevent our victory,” he said in a reference to actors Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan announcing that their parties will fight on all 234 assembly seats. While Haasan began his second phase of election campaign on Tuesday, Rajinikanth will launch his political party in January.

A day ago, Tamil Nadu chief minister and AIADMK co-cordinator Edappadi Palaniswami kicked-off the party election campaign from his home constituency in Salem.