DMK nominates lawyer, trade union leader for RS seats

DMK on Monday nominated senior counsel P Wilson, who pulled off the Marina burial case in favour of late party patriarch M Karunanidhi, and trade union leader M Shanmugam for the biennial Rajya Sabha elections to be held later this month.

The DMK, with 108 members including the strength of its allies, can win 3 seats out of the six that will go to polls on July 18. With the party already announcing that one seat would go to MDMK chief Vaiko, it announced candidates for the remaining two seats.

Ruling AIADMK is yet to announce candidates for two seats since it has allotted one seat to ally, PMK.

With DMK announcing candidates for two seats, it is clear that the Congress, which had made an informal request for a Rajya Sabha seat, will not be obliged.

53-year-old Wilson, former additional Solicitor General, has defended the DMK in a number of cases, including getting a stay on conduct of local body elections in 2016 when the then Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was alive. He shot into fame after he vociferously argued that DMK President Karunanidhi should be buried near the resting place of his mentor C N Annadurai before the Madras High Court.

The DMK had moved the court after the Tamil Nadu government led by the AIADMK refused to allot space on the sprawling Marina Beach to bury Karunanidhi’s mortal remains. Wilson led the DMK’s lawyer team that passionately argued and won the case resulting in the court asking the Tamil Nadu government to allot space on the Marina Beach.

Party sources said Wilson is being rewarded by Stalin for pulling the case in favour of the DMK. Stalin had said after Karunanidhi’s death that he wouldn’t have been alive if his father wasn’t buried near the resting place of Annadurai.

Shanmugham (77) is the head of DMK’s trade union and has been at the forefront of trade union agitations in Tamil Nadu. He took over as the head of the trade union after the death of C Kuppusamy, who had represented North Chennai Lok Sabha constituency for long.

Shanmugham is credited with helping the DMK’s labour wing to gain entry into Nokia’s manufacturing unit in Sriperumbudur before it was shut down.