DMK president M K Stalin holds more meets with party

CHENNAI: DMK president M K Stalin has started to reach out to grassroot-level workers in the last few days, with meetings with the party’s panchayat representatives. So far meetings with 10 district representatives have been completed and another 16 are pending. At times, women councillors come with their children. In one such discussion, Stalin got into a dialogue with Dhanashri, a Class IV student, daughter of a councillor.
“What is your name and which class are you in,” Stalin asked, to which she replied, “My name is Dhanashri and I have been promoted to Class IV.I will vote for you when I attain the voting age.”
Stalin smiled and asked whether she knew him, to which she said, “You are Stalin and my uncle likes you very much.” Stalin advised her to study well. Then he discussed issues with the woman councillor. “You should take all preventive steps to see that the virus does not enter the village. Take care and you must be alert and tell everyone to use masks and wash your hands with soap,” Stalin told her.
Sources in the party said as per the original schedule, Stalin was to have invited district wise panchayat councillors to Chennai for meetings. But with the lockdown restraints, he started meetings through video conferences.
In 2017, when Stalin was the working president of the party, he invited grassroot party functionaries to Chennai and heard them out and also made changes within the party. “Each meeting goes on for about three hours and more than 400 panchayat representatives from three districts participate each day. Out of the 400 representatives, 150 spoke with Stalin,” said a party district secretary.
In the meeting, issues such as problems in the villages, fund crunch and pending projects were discussed. Panchayat representatives also raised issues about pending projects such as the group drinking water project in Ramanathapuram and Sivaganga districts.