A triangular contest in Tamil Nadu; DMK hopes to score hat-trick

Chennai: Battlelines have been drawn for an intense triangular contest in the Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu, one of the states where the I.N.D.I.A. bloc is pinning its hopes of a victory, as the politically crucial Southern state goes to the polls in the first phase on April 19. 

DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance, which won two consecutive general elections in 2019 and 2021, will take on combines led by the principal Opposition, AIADMK, and the BJP, which is leaving no stone unturned to stitch a rainbow coalition of smaller parties. 

The poll schedule will hasten the process of alliance formation in the opposition camp, with the influential parties like Paatali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and Desiya Dravida Murpokku Kazhagam (DMDK), founded by actor Vijayakanth, still undecided on whom to ally with - the AIADMK or the BJP. 

This will be the first time in five years that the AIADMK and BJP will be contesting elections as opponents, after the Dravidian outfit snapped ties with the saffron party in September last year, citing anti-Dravidian and anti-AIADMK proclamations by state BJP chief K Annamalai as the reason.

The state will also witness by-elections in Vilavancode, which is likely to be a direct fight between the Congress and BJP. The by-election was necessitated after incumbent Congress MLA Vijayadharani quit the party to join the BJP.

Meanwhile, the ruling DMK alliance has concluded the seat-sharing arrangement with its partners and is likely to identify the constituencies with Congress, its key ally, in the next couple of days, even as other alliance parties have already announced their candidates. 

On the sidelines of the electoral contest will be the Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK), a controversial political party that eulogizes the now-defunct LTTE and its slain chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. 

The last time the state witnessed a triangular fight in the Lok Sabha polls was in 2014 when J Jayalalithaa launched a ‘Lady versus Modi’ assault to win 37 of the 39 seats by contesting alone, leaving two to the BJP-led alliance and ensuring the DMK's defeat.  

While the DMK hopes for a sweep as it believes that the alliance strength which has been proven multiple time in the past and the three-year performance of its government will make things easy, it is an acid test for the AIADMK and its general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami to prove their mettle and justify the decision to snap ties with the BJP. 

The party, for which the 2024 elections is particularly crucial as it has not tasted victory in an election since 2016 following the death of Jayalalithaa, cited the alliance with the BJP as the reason for its defeats in 2019 and 2021. 

The AIADMK will also face the alliance test in the next few days as no major political party has announced its decision to join the coalitions led by the principal Opposition party. The party is banking on its core vote bank – its vote percentage in 2021 was 33 per cent – to put up a spirited fight against the DMK and BJP in the three-cornered contest. 

The split in opposition votes is likely to benefit the DMK, which is looking at a hat-trick win and a repeat of the 2019 performance when the alliance won 38 of the 39 seats at stake. 

For the BJP, which is making tall claims of its vote share going up to 20 per cent in the past three years, the election is critical as it will test the party’s individual strength in many regions. 

An alliance with the PMK, which has a committed vote bank of about 6 per cent, will help in the northern region, while the support of expelled AIADMK leaders, O Panneerselvam and T T V Dhinakaran, might give the party much-needed momentum among Mukulathors, a dominant caste spread across Central and Southern TN. The BJP has also invested heavily in Tamil Nadu with Prime Minister Narendra Modi making back-to-back visits and the party conducting a yatra covering all 234 assembly constituencies in the state. 

However, the BJP will have to counter the ‘Tamil Nadu versus Delhi’ narrative of the ruling DMK, which has been training its guns against the BJP-led Union government for not allocating funds to flood-affected districts for relief and rehabilitation works. 

As far as the issues are concerned, the AIADMK and BJP will make the “misgovernance” of DMK and the involvement of a ruling party functionary in an international drug ring as the major election issue, while the DMK will seek votes based on its performance and bank on the 10-year anti-incumbency against the Narendra Modi dispensation.