New Delhi: Poised to form government, the DMK is currently leading in 122 of the state’s 234 seats, well beyond the 118 simple majority mark.
DMK president M.K. Stalin, who is set to become the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for the first time, on Sunday thanked the people for voting his party to power and assured them that he would truthfully work for them.
Stalin expressed his ‘heartfelt thanks’ to all the people of the state for mandating his party to govern Tamil Nadu for the sixth time.
The DMK-alliance is either leading or has won a total of 144 seats. Congress is leading in 17, the CPI and CPI(M) in two each and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi in three.
The AIADMK was leading in 74 and won two seats.
The AIADMK, which had also badly lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the state – managing to win just one seat while the DMK-led alliance had walked away with all the other 38 – has shown little sign of improvement in these polls.
The AIADMK, which had won 136 seats under then party head and chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in the 2016 polls, and thus became the first party in over three decades to return to power in the state, has not looked the same since her demise a year later.
In fact, the party’s share has taken a severe beating.
Most of the prominent leaders of DMK, which has made a remarkable comeback under M.K. Stalin, are leading in their constituencies.
Stalin was leading by over 3,000 votes from Kolathur against his nearest rival, Aadhi Rajaram of AIADMK, whom he had earlier defeated from Thousand Lights in Chennai in 2001.
Stalin’s son, Udhayanidhi, was leading by a margin of over 20,000 votes against Kassali A.V.A of Pattali Makkal Katchi from the Chepauk-Tiruvallikeni seat, which has been a traditional bastion of the DMK.
Tamil Nadu chief minister and joint coordinator of AIADMK Edappadi K. Palaniswami was leading by 19,903 votes in Edappadi against T. Sambath Kumar of DMK.
Former Tamil Nadu chief minister and joint coordinator, O. Panneerselvam, was involved in a keen fight with DMK’s Thanga Tamilselvan in Bodinayakanur constituency in Theni district. As per the trends, he was leading by a slender margin of 1,333 votes.
Nephew of Jayalalithaa’s former aide V.K. Sasikala and founder of founder of Amma Makkal Munettra Kazhagam (AMMK), TTV Dhinakaran, was trailing by double digit votes against Cabinet minister and AIADMK candidate, Kadambur Raju, from Kovilpatti.
Background
For over three decades, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) founder M. Karunanidhi and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) supremo J. Jayalalithaa dominated the political scene in Tamil Nadu. Since 1989, their parties won alternate elections till AIADMK broke the trend in 2016 by retaining power. Following the death of Jayalalithaa the same year and then of Karunanidhi in 2018, the political landscape of the state has altered, making these elections are interesting.Background
In the AIADMK, the baton first passed from Jayalalithaa to her confidante, O. Panneerselvam, who became chief minister after her demise but later quit and is now joint coordinator of the party. Later, Edappadi K. Palaniswami, who is also a joint coordinator, took over as chief minister and saw the completion of the party’s term in office. The party has gone into these polls in an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Pattali Makkal Katchi, a party founded by S. Ramadoss in 1989 as a political outfit for the Vanniyars (OBC).
The DMK is now being led by Karunanidhi’s son, M.K. Stalin, who looks likely to become chief minister. The party allied with 12 other parties, including the Congress, Communist Party of India and CPI(M) to form the Secular Progressive Alliance.
Apart from the two main alliances, there were three other major political parties that contested these polls, with two of them going in as an alliance.
In 2018, a year before the Lok Sabha polls, actor-politician Kamal Haasan floated the Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM), which is hoping to make major inroads riding on his popularity among the cinema-going population. Then there is also an alliance between the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) of TTV Dhinakaran and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) of Asaduddin Owaisi.
The voting for the 234 assembly seats on April 6 witnessed a 72.81% turnout, which was exactly two percentage points less than the 74.81% seen during the 2016 elections.
Almost all exit polls for the assembly elections in the state have predicted a landslide victory for the DMK-Congress-Left alliance with some predicting a complete rout of the ruling AIADMK.
Almost all the exit polls had given DMK a clear majority in Tamil Nadu and projected it to wrest the 234-member House.
The India Today-Axis My India poll gave it 175-195 seats, the ABP-C-Voter gave DMK 160-172 seats, News 24-Today’s Chanakya projected it to win 175; Republic TV-CNX has projected DMK-Congress to get 160-17, India Ahead ETG Research has given the alliance 165-190 and Times Now-C Voter has given it 166. All these exit polls have given the AIADMK-BJP alliance between 38 and 70 seats. They have also projected that AMMK and NMN would end up in single digits, if they managed to open their score.
While AIADMK went into the elections with the promise of ensuring ‘Amma aatchi’ or Amma’s rule and forming yet another government that would serve the people, the opposition DMK alliance is trying to capitalise on the anti-incumbency factor. It has also been focussing on promises not kept by AIADMK and how they state’s economy, and especially the micro, small and medium enterprises have been hit by a slowdown.
This apart the creation of caste-based sub quotas, the protests against Sterlite copper at Thoothukudi in 2018 and the ongoing fishermen’s agitation against the expansion of the Adani port at Kattupalli have also figured in the campaigning of the parties.
The AIADMK is hoping for a repeat of its performance in 2016, when it had created history by becoming the first party to return to power in the state after 32 years. In those elections, the party led by Jayalalithaa had polled 40.88% of all votes cast and bagged 136 seats. The DMK had finished with 89 seats despite having a fairly close vote share of 39.85%.
The swing in vote share for both the parties had indicated that while DMK had increased its support base with 9.2% more voters, the AIADMK managed to remain nearly a percentage point ahead of it despite its own vote share rising rather tepidly at 2.4%. However, the one percentage point difference in the end was enough to hand over power to AIADMK for another five years.
Following the death of both the iconic leaders, the state witnessed its first major fight between the two parties in the Lok Sabha polls of 2019. In these polls, the United Progressive Alliance, led by DMK in the state, won a landslide victory.
Of the 39 seats, the DMK-led alliance won 38. The DMK, which was led by Stalin in the polls, secured 52.39% of all votes polled. The AIADMK, which was led in these elections by Palaniswami, only managed to win one seat – of Theni – as its vote share fell to 31.26%.