: Assiduously working for a grand victory through the years, DMK President M K Stalin single handedly steered his party through the long night,sweeping the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu after back to back poll debacles.
The DMK-led front, which also comprises Congress and the IUML, is set for a clean sweep and is poised to win 37 of 38 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu with the lone seat appearing to go to the AIADMK.
The DMK lost the 2011 and 2016 Assembly polls and 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
DMK appears set to win in all the 19 constituencies it fought and its allies MDMK, VCK (Villupuram), KMDK,and IJK who fought on the Rising Sun symbol of the Dravidian party are also likely to win in view of the huge margins, taking the Dravidian party's total tally to 23 seats.
Allies Congress is set to emerge victorious in 8, IUML and VCK (Chidambaram) one each and CPI and CPI(M) two each.
Seeking the early bird advantage, 66-year-old Stalin launched DMK's village level outreach programme (Ooratchi Sabai) across Tamil Nadu as early as January, with the slogan "let us meet the people, tell them and win over their hearts."
Though AIADMK had made fun of his campaign, saying "he does not remove his sunglasses even in the dark," Stalin kept on improvising and came up with other campaigns like "Pesalam Vanga" (Come Let us Talk), similar to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Chai pe Charcha."