KUALA LUMPUR: MIC will not give up the Sungai Siput parliamentary seat, a constituency the party has contested in since the first general election, said president Datuk G. Palanivel.
He said there was no truth to reports that MIC would exchange the parliamentary seat with Gerakan.
“We will not switch Sungai Siput,” Palanivel said in response to a vernacular newspaper report that many branch leaders were shocked to learn that the party leadership was planning to swap the seat, which has traditionally been contested by MIC presidents until 2008.
The late Tun V. T. Sambanthan held the seat from 1955 to 1974 while Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu defended the seat for eight consecutive terms until he was defeated in 2008 by Parti Sosialis Malaysia’s Dr Michael Jeyakumar.
Both Sambanthan and Samy Vellu were MIC presidents as well as Cabinet ministers.
It is rumoured that state assembly speaker Datuk R. Ganesan and Samy Vellu’s son, S. Vell Paari, were in the running for the Sungai Siput seat.
Ganesan, who was dropped as the candidate for the Sungkai state seat in the 2008 election, has thrown his weight behind Palanivel who took over as president in December 2010.
It is an open secret that he has lobbied for the seat.
Vell Paari has been frequenting the constituency and has already held meetings with several non-governmental organisations and grassroots leaders.
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