RK Nagar Assembly constituency in northern Chennai has the sea on one side. Fortunately, the Ockhi cyclone that lashed the coastal areas of southern Tamil Nadu did not reach RK Nagar. However, a political cyclone is now sweeping the constituency where an assembly by-election is to be held for the seat rendered vacant by the demise of former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa, who left behind an eventful era in Tamil Nadu politics.
The main contestants—AIADMK, AIADMK rebel and the DMK—make the fight a three-way battle. The BJP nominee as well as Independents, too, are in the fray. The polling is to be held on December 21 and the result will be declared on December 24.
New strategies in fresh scenario
The RK Nagar by-election should have been held six months ago. The election was cancelled two days before the polling after it was found that the voters were given money in huge quantities. The chief contestants now were in the fray then also, but the friends have turned foes.
E. Madhusoodanan, who was the candidate of the AIADMK’s O. Paneerselvam faction, is now the official candidate of the party. T.T.V. Dhinakaran, who had sided with the ruling AIADMK then, is at present a rebel candidate. Chief Minister Edappali K. Palaniswamy and his cabinet colleagues, who had actively campaigned for T.T.V. Dhinakaran in April, are now bent upon ensuring Dhinakaran’s defeat. Maruthu Ganesh of the DMK has not undergone any change. The BJP has fielded Karu Nagarajan. There are a total of 59 candidates.
Madhusoodanan, who was a minister in the first Jayalalithaa cabinet, had represented RK Nagar constituency in 1991. Maruthu Ganesh is the DMK’s regional leader. His mother was a corporation councillor earlier. Both Madhusoodanan and Maruthu Ganesh hail from RK Nagar . Dinakaran is leaving no stone unturned in his attempt to re-establish the prominence of the ‘Mannargudi clan.’ Votes of the Nadars and the Telugus are crucial to this end.
The RK Nagar constituency is generally in favour of the AIADMK though the Congress and the DMK have won there two times each. After the constituency came into being, AIADMK candidates have won seven times. Jayalalithaa won there twice. Her winning margin was about 40,000 votes in the election held in 2016.
Apart from vote statistics, there are two other factors also in favour of the AIADMK: one, the tendency of Tamil Nadu to vote for the ruling party, and, two, regaining of the party’s two-leaf symbol recently. A considerable section of the electorate even now votes for the symbol. However, if there are two factors in favour of the AIADMK, there are a hundred factors against it.
They include the not so smooth relation between Palaniswamy and Panneerselvam camps; Dhinkakaran's aggressive campaign with his ‘pressure cooker’ symbol, and the general feeling that the present state government is a failure.
BJP, the common enemy
In the last assembly elections, the BJP got less than 3,000 votes in RK Nagar. Even then, the opposition parties considered the BJP as their ‘common enemy.’ All the opposition parties fear that the BJP is trying to get a foothold in Tamil Nadu by using the AIADMK government as a proxy, aided by the central government. It was the anti-BJP sentiment that prompted the opposition parties to form a ‘rainbow alliance’ and support the DMK candidate. In short, the opposition parties’ target is actually the BJP even as it battles the AIADMK.
The CPI(M), CPI, VCK, and Vaiko’s MDMK have announced their support to the DMK. Vaiko, who had left the DMK alleging that M.Karunanidhi was giving excessive prominence to son M.K. Stalin, is again joining hands with the party after a decade. Though the PMK, actor Vijayakant’s DMDK, Sarathkumar’s Samathwa Makkal Kakshi and the TMC are not contesting in the by-election, they have not yet publicly announced support to the DMK.
There is a feeling in general, even within the DMK, that Stalin has failed to exploit the political crisis following Jayalalithaa’s demise. More questions will be raised against Stalin’s leadership if the DMK is beaten in RK Nagar despite the facts that many actors are in favour of the party. A Delhi court is scheduled to announce its verdict on the 2G spectrum case on December 21, the same day on which the by-election will be held. That the defendants in the case include former minister A. Raja and Karunanidhi’ daughter and MP Kanimozhi is a matter of concern for the DMK.
Though the ruling party generally wins Tamil Nadu by-elections, the political map of the state has changed when that scenario changed. The AIADMK had won the Dindigul by-election in 1973, when the DMK was in power. This was the AIADMK’s first electoral victory. Thereafter, the AIADMK rewrote the political history of Tamil Nadu. The whole state is keenly watching whether such a game-changing event will happen in RK Nagar. December 24, the day the results will come out, also marks the death anniversary of MGR. Whatever be the outcome, the fate of the AIADMK, founded by MGR, will be decided on that date.
This article was originally published in the Malayala Manorama on December 12, 2017
