DMK-Cong proves pollsters wrong

CHENNAI: In a verdict that belied pre-poll projections, the DMK-Congress combine overcame its incumbency disadvantage and mopped up 28 of the 40 seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. With Vijayakanth's DMDK splitting up the anti-establishment vote, the opposition AIADMK-Left-PMK-MDMK combine could bag only 12 seats, in tandem with the poor performance of the third front in the rest of the country.
The DMK won 18 of the 22 seats it contested, up from 16 last time; for the Congress, nine of the 16 candidates, including one in Puducherry, made it. But in a perplexing side-show, the TN voter ensured the defeat of several senior Congressmen, including stalwarts Mani Shankar Aiyar, KV Thangkabalu, EVKS Elangovan and R Prabhu. Even Union home minister P Chidambaram barely scraped through in Sivaganga. Another front constituent, VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan won his seat in Chidambaram, but his colleague lost in Villupuram.
AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa's strategy of rallying forces with the PMK, the MDMK and the Left failed to work, with just nine of the AIADMK's 23 candidates winning their seats. Her allies could only bag another three. Voters appeared to endorse the DMK government's welfare schemes and reject criticism of its ambivalent stand on Sri Lanka.
Having swept the polls in 2004 with an umbrella alliance, DMK was handicapped this time by the loss of four partners from that combination to the AIADMK front. That the PMK, MDMK, CPI and CPM could not together bring down the DMK's tally spoke for the ruling party's performance. This is the first time that the DMK front has won back-to-back victories in Tamil Nadu in a Lok Sabha election.
"We didn't see any anti-incumbency, to start with. Instead, we saw an overwhelming response from the public to our welfare schemes," said M K Stalin, Karunanidhi's son and his likely successor, who had campaigned across the state in the absence of his father.
The defeat of some Congress ministers and senior leaders may give an impression that Tamil nationalists had succeeded in defeating them, but the fact that the DMK won most of the seats it contested would contradict the theory. Clearly, the attempt to whip up Tamil sentiment - the highlight of the campaign being Jayalalithaa's promise to send the military to create Tamil Eelam' in Sri Lanka - failed.
In the final analysis, AIADMK-led front appeared to have also paid a heavy price for the presence of the DMDK in the fray: Vijayakanth managed to split a sizeable chunk of the anti-incumbency vote in several areas, leaving Jaya and her allies lagging behind the DMK-Congress combine by slender margins.
The extent of the DMK's success can be gauged from the fact that Karunanidhi's elder son, MK Azhagiri, was able to ensure the victory of the front's candidates even in south Tamil Nadu, traditionally an AIADMK stronghold. The AIADMK suffered shock defeats in Theni, Tirunelveli and Tuticorin - constituencies where Jayalalithaa had attracted huge crowds.
Among its allies, CPI and CPM could win only one each out of the six they contested. CPI state secretary and an expected winner, D Pandian, lost in Chennai North. The CPI could only win the Tenkasi reserved seat while the CPM won a lone seat in Coimbatore, but lost Madurai and Kanyakumari.
MDMK leader and pro-LTTE icon Vaiko and two of his other three party candidates suffered losses. MDMK's sole consolation victory at Erode was at the expense of Union minister of state for commerce Elangovan. PMK too suffered a severe drubbingall its seven nominees in TN and Puducherry lost in a verdict that appeared to be a strong indictment of his pre-election crossover from the DMK camp to the AIADMK fold. The elections have dashed the image of PMK founder S Ramadoss as a shrewd tactician whose campaign decisions were guided by winnability.
For Jayalalithaa, it was a golden opportunity to play a big role in national politics, but her third front card failed to impress the voters.
The BJP had fancied winning Kanyakumari, where three Christian candidates represented the CPM, DMK and DMDK, but an obvious cross-denominational consensus by the clergy to back the DMK's Helan Davidson saw the DMK through.
Vijayakanth takes home little consolation save the satisfaction of having spoiled the chances of the two main fronts, especially Vaiko in Virudhunagar, where the DMDK's K Pandiarajan polled nearly 1.25 lakh votes, while Vaiko's margin of defeat to Manik Tagore of Congress was just over 16,000 votes.