Though the AIADMK won the elections held to the Tamil Nadu Assembly and party General Secretary J Jayalalithaa was sworn in as Chief Minister for a “historic” consecutive term, data collected from the election results may not be music to the ears of the winners. They also need to be careful of the DMK that increased its vote share in the just-concluded Assembly polls as its chief Karunanidhi has already started planning ahead for the next lok Sabha elections.
Jayalalithaa who contested from the Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency, a Chennai suburb, defeated her nearest rival Shimla Muthuchozhan of the DMK by a margin of 39,545 votes. It is being projected as an impressive victory by the AIADMK cadre. But what they have forgotten is the fact that Jayalalithaa had contested from the same constituency in 2015 in a by-election and won by a record margin.
In the by-election held in the month of June 2015, Jayalalithaa had polled 1,60,432 votes while her nearest rival C Mahendran of the CPI could poll just 9,710 votes. Within one year, Jayalalithaa lost 63,214 votes to a greenhorn fielded by the DMK. The AIADMK leaders need to do a lot of introspection about the drastic reduction in the number of votes polled by the party. The final result of the 2016 assembly election in Tamil Nadu has a lot of similarities with the results of the famous Calcutta league Football match between traditional rivals East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. Whoever is the winner, they scrape through by a whisker!
The AIADMK contested in all 234 constituencies (election to two constituencies has been deferred) and won in 134 constituencies. But the DMK which won in 89 constituencies had contested only in 173 seats leaving the remaining to its allies Indian National Congress, Muslim league,Puthiya Tamilakam, MMK. The Congress won in eight constituencies and the Muslim league in one. Congress leaders could feel happy in the fact that the party won the eight seats out of the 41 it was allocated by the DMK.
“Had the Congress leadership accepted the initial offer made by DMK chief Karunanidhi, the result would have been entirely different,” a source close to Karunanidhi told The Pioneer. “Karunanidhi had offered the Congress ten seats from where the party would have won handsomely. He also put forward another option to the party; the Congress could select ten seats of its choice from where the DMK would ensure their victory. But Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Congress representative who held negotiations with the DMK leadership was not impressed and wanted more seats,” said the source.
Murugan former IAS officer and a close confidante of Karunanidhi said though the DMK lost the battle, the defeat was full of dignity. “We will be seeing a resurgent DMK as well as the Congress in the Assembly. Though they did not win the match, the DMK-Congress combine put in a sterling performance. If they continue this unity, then the AIADMK will have a tough time in the 2019 lok Sabha election,” said Murugan who disclosed that DMK has started plannig for lok Sabha polls.
It was true that there was no visible anti-incumbency factor against the Government. But the directives issued by various factions of the Church urging the laity to vote only for the DMK-Congress combine could have played a major role, feels Pon Vijayaraghavan, BJP leader from Kanyakumari. He has enough reasons for his conclusion as not one AIADMK or BJP candidate could win from Kanyakumari district which has considerable Christian population.