While the Tamil Nadu Opposition DMK party has finalized and announced its candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, the ruling ADMK party has been pedaling in a slow pace of naming its final candidates as the party's leadership has been coming through the lobbies from the allied parties which are strongly vying to reserve a berth in the Upper house of the Parliament at least this time.

The ADMK has been in a muddle of picking up the candidates. As we reported earlier, the party will be eyeing to name the candidates from its own camp by declining the lobby from the allied leaders with the view of enhancing its presence in the Rajya Sabha as the party has only one MP in the Lok Sabha. The election for six Rajya Sabha seats of Tamil Nadu will be taking place on March 26th, 2020 and with the current strength in the assembly, both DMK and ADMK parties can easily win three seats each. 

For its share, the DMK has named Tiruchi Siva, the sitting MP, NR Elango, and Anthiyur Selvaraj as its candidates whereas ADMK has been stormed by its allied leaders including GK Vasan, Vijayakanth, and AC Shanmugam. These leaders have been striving to bestow with the Rajya Sabha ticket from ADMK. Our sources say that Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami has selected Thambidurai, Vijila Sathyanand, and Dhalavaisundaram as his choice and passed his recommendations to Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam. 

However, the sources stated that Panneerselvam has denied giving his nod to Edappadi's pick by citing that his supporter KP Munusamy must be given with the ticket and he got the assurance from Edappadi that the party would award ticket for KP Munusamy to step into the upper house. Some of the party members had said that AC Shanmugam, the chief of New Justice Party, is on the fray of getting a ticket. Shanmugam has been one of the closest aides to Rajinikanth and he contested as ADMK's candidate in Vellore constituency in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Our sources have further stated that Panneerselvam's pick KP Munusamy, Edappadi's pick Thambidurai, and Rajini's aide AC Shanmugam have high possibilities of grabbing the three tickets of ADMK party and it has been reported that the party would soon announce the official confirmation on the candidates. Thambidurai has served as Deputy Lok Sabha Speaker from 2014-19 while KP Munusamy was a former minister in Jayalalithaa's cabinet and he was one of the strong supporters of Panneerselvam when he revolted the party in 2017, shortly after the demise of Jayalalithaa.