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Seven members of the Chennai City Corporation council, including five women, crossed the floor on Friday and joined the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Tamil Nadu's ruling party.
The seven councillors led by senior Congress member P Vetrivel crossed over to the AIADMK in the presence of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa at her Poes Garden residence.
Five of the defecting members, three of them women, belonged to the Congress, while two other women members were from the DMK.
The move is part of the AIADMK's efforts to acquire a majority in the council, so that it can retain the post of deputy mayor and also influence the mayoral election that the high court has ordered to be held in the next six months.
The CCC has been in the news since the state government passed the one-man-one-post law to deny Mayor and DMK leader M K Stalin a second stint in the office.
While the Madras high court struck down the law last week, it also denied Stalin a chance to contest again for the post citing the Madras Corporation Act, which provides for an annual change of the mayor through indirect election based on a cyclical representation of castes.
Deputy Mayor and AIADMK member 'Karate' Thyagrajan, is discharging the functions of mayor after Stalin's ouster, at the instance of the Congress.
But of late the Congress, which was an ally of the AIADMK during the assembly polls and corporation elections in 2001, has distanced itself from the ruling party.
The Congress also managed to acquire the numbers required to tilt the balance against the AIADMK for the post of deputy mayor after the breakaway Tamil Maanila Congress merged with it in August and the DMK also offered support.
More reports from Tamil Nadu
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