Chennai: Chief minister and AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalitha on Wednesday announced the names of four candidates for the Rajya Sabha election on June 11. With six RS seats from Tamil Nadu falling vacant and with a 134-member strength in the state assembly, AIADMK can nominate four members. Each RS nominee requires the backing of 34 legislators to get elected to the Upper House.They include former Congress leader and former Union minister S R Balasubramanian, a G K Moopanar loyalist, who switched sides in the run up to the assembly election. His party leader G K Vasan of Tamil Maanila Congress had failed to strike a pre-poll deal with Jayalalithaa and teamed up with DMDK's Vijayakant and the four-member People's Welfare Front. The six-party alliance including TMC drew a blank. SRB as he is called said TMC's prospects were doomed in such an alliance and joined AIADMK.Three others in AIADMK nominated to RS include former housing and urban development minister and party's Thanjavur strongman R Vaithilingam, who was defeated in the Orathanadu constituency by 3,900 votes; sitting RS member A Navaneethakrishnan, member of the legal team that handled Jayalalithaa's wealth case; and joint secretary of the legal wing of Kanyakumari district A Vijayakumar. AIADMK lost all six seats in Kanyakumari district to Congress and DMK. This perhaps prompted Jayalalithaa to consider Vijayakumar's nomination to the Upper House.DMK, which has a strength of 89 members in the state assembly, has nominated its spokesman T K S Elangovan and headquarters secretary R S Bharthi to the RS. AIADMK's strength in RS will increase to 13, while DMK will have four members.

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