CHENNAI: Ending all suspense and controversies, the Election Commission on Thursday night allocated 'Gift Pack' as the common symbol for all 59 candidates put up by T T V Dhinakaran's Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) in the 40 Lok Sabha seats and 19 assembly by-polls in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry where elections are scheduled to take place on April 18."The EC has decided to allot the common symbol 'gift pack' to all the candidates contesting on behalf of the petitioner group as mentioned in the order of the Supreme Court," said EC secretary Pramod Kumar Sharma in a letter to Tamil Nadu and Puducherry chief electoral officers (CEOs).The EC's decision to allot a common symbol to all candidates of AMMK, which is yet to be registered, brings to an end the troubles that the party faced in getting a common symbol, in the wake of being an unregistered party. It had to knock on the doors of Supreme Court to get a favourable order and early this week the apex court had directed EC to consider offering a 'common symbol' to AMMK's candidates, even if it cannot allot 'pressure cooker', which the party had sought. By virtue of representing an unregistered party, the AMMK candidates will, however, be treated as independents and the symbol on EVMs too will appear accordingly, well after the national and regional recognized parties."The EC's communication came to me on Thursday evening, while I was campaigning in Tiruvallur Lok Sabha constituency. They had asked me to choose one from among 36 symbols. The 'gift pack' resembled a scheme launched by Amma (J Jayalalithaa) in 2016, where several goodies were gift wrapped in a box and given to a new born girl child in government hospitals. I immediately opted for the 'gift box' symbol and EC too had communicated later in the night, confirming the symbol to us," AMMK deputy general secretary T T V Dhinakaran told reporters in Kancheepuram. With elections just about 20 days away, AMMK has the hard task to reach the new symbol to the masses. Dhinakaran, who was campaigning in Arakkonam Lok Sabha consittuency on Friday held a model of the 'gift pack' symbol in his hand. Party cadres too had got ready a few models. The AMMK's IT wing started the exercise to popularize the symbol from the morning. "We used all social media platforms, including twitter, instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp to spread the symbol and within couple of hours messages had reached 2-3 crore voters in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry," claimed a source in theparty's IT wing.

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