While the AIADMK and the DMK are the two major political forces in Tamil Nadu, the BJP is making valiant efforts to carve a place for itself. Meanwhile, the Congress, divided and fractured, is all but dead in the State
It is said that all is fair in love and war. In the battle for political supremacy in Tamil Nadu, norms of civilisation have always been thrown to the winds by both the AIADMK and the DMK, the major protagonists in the State. The ruling AIADMK swept the by-polls held to local bodies recently, the results of which were declared on Monday.
The party literally swept the election. The party had won the mayoral post of Tirunelveli Municipal Corporation as there were no candidates from the Opposition parties.
All the parties other than the BJP and the left had boycotted the by-poll, which saw the BJP’s mayoral candidate at Thirunelveli joining the AIADMK. Elsewhere in the State, there were complaints of the BJP candidates being abducted, kidnapped and of mysteriously withdrawing from the fray. A report from Ramanathapuram says the “late” husband of the AIADMK’s candidate for the municipal chairmanship cast his vote in the polling held on September 18. The authorities did not delete his name from the voters’ list in spite of being informed about his passing away.
After the 2014 lok Sabha election, in which the AIADMK won 37 out of the 39 seats at stake from Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa told her party people that they had to win the 2016 Assembly election. The party had an unassailable lead in 207 of the 234 Assembly constituencies during the lok Sabha election.
The DMK is in a pretty bad position. Mr M Karunanidhi is confined to a wheel-chair. His speech has become slurred. Heir apparent MK Stalin ended up as a major failure in the lok Sabha election campaign. Half-way through the campaign, Mr Karunanidhi had to undertake an arduous journey across the State to rejuvenate the cadre and party candidates who were all hand-picked by Mr Stalin. Needless to say, all the DMK candidates ended up biting the dust.
Other political parties had yielded their base to the AIADMK. Mr Vijayakanth’s DMDK, the main Opposition party in the Assembly, is on the verge of disintegration with seven members out of the party, MlAs, breaking away and extending support to the Chief Minister. More members are contemplating to walk over to the AIADMK camp. But Ms Jayalalithaa is believed to have told them to wait. If DMDK loses more MlAs, Mr Vijayakanth would lose his status as the leader of the Opposition which will go to Mr Stalin. Ms Jayalalithaa does not like that to happen.
The present situation is favourable for the BJP to grow in Tamil Nadu. The charisma of Mr Narendra Modi and the changes he has brought during the first 100 days of his regime have made him dear to the people of Tamil Nadu. They are waiting for a change to happen in the State. People are fed up with both the DMK and the AIADMK. Both the parties survive on cheap populism and sops.
If the BJP gets strengthened in Tamil Nadu, it would be only at the cost of the AIADMK. This is because more than 90 per cent of the supporters of the AIADMK are Hindus and there is no second-rung leadership in that party. The BJP can flourish in Tamil Nadu only at the expense of the AIADMK.
This is the reason why the AIADMK is trying to strangulate the BJP in Tamil Nadu. Ms Jayalalithaa may be a good friend of top BJP leaders in New Delhi. But that does not come in her way of squeezing the life out of the BJP in the State. What is being played out is a repetition of the 1971 operation which set in motion the process of the destruction of the Congress in the State.
Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, entered into an electoral alliance with Karunanidhi, the then Chief Minister and the DMK chief, to defeat K Kamaraj. Mr Karunanidhi had no hesitation in extending a hand of friendship to the Congress in spite of the fact that no Congress leader in the State was happy with such an alliance. The Congress, which had lost out to the DMK in the 1967 Assembly election, was waiting for a chance to come back to the centre stage. But Mr Karunanidhi slowly throttled the party.
The Congress, which split in 1969 and 1977 due to internecine fights, suffered yet another split in Tamil Nadu in 1996 because of the move by then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao to align with the AIADMK for the Assembly election. A major faction led by GK Moopanar, who was opposed to the alliance with the AIADMK, came out of the party, seized the party headquarters and emerged as the official Congress in Tamil Nadu, with the name, ‘Tamil Manila Congress’. That marked the unofficial and certain burial of the Indian National Congress in Tamil Nadu.