DMK alliance will get 40/40 seats in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry: Dayanidhi Maran

Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], April 17 : Exuding confidence in retaining the Central Chennai constituency, DMK's incumbent MP, Dayanidhi Maran, said on Wednesday that the INDIA alliance will win all 40 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
All 39 seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in Puducherry will vote in a single phase on April 19.
"In Central Chennai constituency, it is very clear that the people here will reelect DMK because of the trust they have in our chief minister, MK Stalin. In the last three years, our chief minister has delivered every poll promise, which clearly shows that in Tamil Nadu, DMK will win again," he said on the last day of campaigning for the April 19 polls.
The DMK leader also called BJP MP Tejasvi Surya "fool" for his remark that the 'Karnataka government is getting inspired by the DMK's anti-Hindu culture'.
"We are for equality. If Tejasvi Surya wants to believe in dividing people on the basis of religion and caste, he is a fool," Maran said.
Maran's statement comes after Surya, in an interview with ANI, said that the DMK "represents everything that is negative and wrong."
"When you look at the kind of politics that the DMK has been practicing, it represents everything that is negative and wrong about the country's political system. It clearly looks like the Congress party in Karnataka is getting inspired by certain SOPs that the DMK follows in Tamil Nadu," Surya said.
Dayanidhi Maran also held a campaign in Triplicane on the last day of the election campaign in the Chennai constituency, which goes to polls on April 19. Votes will be counted on June 4.
Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the DMK leader said, "We will not get carried away by lies that are made by PM Modi and the BJP. For the first time, PM Modi has come eight times to Tamil Nadu. In Tamil Nadu, it is 40 out of 40 for the DMK-INDIA alliance."
Tamil Nadu's Chennai Central Lok Sabha seat, with six assembly segments, will witness a fierce battle between the ruling DMK and opposition BJP.
The DMK has fielded incumbent MP Dayanidhi Maran, seeking to retain the seat, while the BJP has announced Vinoj P Selvam is giving a tight fight to Maran.
Chennai Central is considered a stronghold of the DMK, considering its history with the Maran family.
Sitting MP Dayanidhi Maran had won from the constituency in 2004, 2009 and 2019. He was the Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government in 2004. Dayanidhi Maran's father, late Union Minister Murasoli Maran, had also represented the seat three times.
In 2019, the DMK-led alliance swept the Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu, winning 38 of 39 seats.