Chennai: TVK has planned a joint rally with leaders of its alliance parties at Madurantakam on Oct 1, to project a picture of unity and tackle the challenge mounted by DMK and AIADMK in the bypoll.VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan, TNCC president Manickam Tagore, MDMK general secretary Vaiko and IUML president K M Khader Mohideen will share the stage with TVK general secretaries N Anand and Aadhav Arjuna.The public meeting of TVK led Secular Social Justice Victory alliance is organised amid murmurs of discontent among TVK’s allies that chief minister C Joseph Vijay chose not to share the stage with them during his recent campaign in Madurantakam. In his speech too, Vijay had only mentioned IUML leaving out other allies.However, Vijay will not be there at the Oct 1 public meeting too. Instead, he would be campaigning the next day in the constituency. But TVK leaders say the joint campaign, the first since the alliance was formed on Sept 9, would project a united front in the bypoll.Initially, Thirumavalavan had planned to campaign for the TVK candidate on Oct 30. However, TVK leaders suggested the idea of the joint campaign involving all alliance partners to demonstrate their collective strength and counter the opposition’s campaign.TVK leadership believes that Vijay’s campaign on Oct 2, along with the joint efforts of its leaders, would counter AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami’s pitch for “justice for the betrayal” and the opposition’s charge of “horse-trading” against TVK and its leadership.“So, it has been decided to hold a joint campaign meeting on Oct 1,” VCK general secretary D Ravikumar said.Ravikumar, along with TVK functionaries and election in-charges, visited the venue to oversee arrangements for the meeting. The organisers expect around 5,000 people to attend.He, however, ruled out the possibility of a similar campaign in Dharapuram due to the short window period to make arrangements. The campaign period ends on Oct 4.
