Vellore LS polls: DMK pulls of victory after tight race

A day after the first death anniversary of DMK patriarch and Dravidian icon M. Karunanidhi, it was celebration time at the party headquarters in Chennai. In a tight race, the party wrested the Vellore parliamentary constituency, defeating A.C. Shanmugam, founder of the New Justice Party, an alliance party of the AIADMK, with a margin of 8,141 votes.

While victory celebrations with high-decibel crackers going up in the air and drum beats are on at the DMK headquarters, a few kilometers away from Anna Salai, at Royapettah, the AIADMK cadres do not seem to be upset. “Who says we have lost? We are not worried because we lost. Look at the margin,” says Anjulakshmi who along with her party colleagues took to dancing when the first few rounds of results were in favour of the AIADMK. 

Though the DMK has pulled off a victory, an analysis of the voting pattern, votes polled and the difference clearly indicate that the DMK did not have a comfortable victory. The party, which had won many of the constituencies with a huge margin of over 3 to 4 lakh votes in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, scored 4,85,340 votes while AIADMK’s Shanmugam polled 4,77,199 votes—a difference only one per cent vote share. The AIADMK had polled 31 per cent votes in the recent Lok Sabha polls, at least 12 percent less than the votes the DMK had polled. 

In fact, several other factors played in favour of the AIADMK. Shanmugam, though a candidate from an alliance party, was earlier with the AIADMK as a minister during the MGR regime and had won from the same constituency in the 1980s. He is also a popular face in the constituency. Also, the AIADMK this time played its cards close to its chest and did not invite a single BJP leader in the state to campaign for him. “It seemed as if we were contesting alone. Even the PMK, one of our major allies, did not come to campaign. But all their votes have got transferred to us,” says a senior AIADMK minister. For the AIADMK, the vote polarisation worked well in the constituency where there are at least more than three lakh Muslim votes, the Mudhaliars, Vanniyars, Reddiars and the Naidus. The AIADMK insiders say that the party was well received during the campaign even at the Muslim dominated regions like Ambur and Vaniyambadi. 

“You can’t term it as a victory for the DMK. The campaign was against us in the constituency. Everyone said the AIADMK is very unpopular and its vote share has eroded. We were being written off. But nearly four lakh votes were polled in favour of us in Vellore, just 8,000 less than that of the DMK. The AIADMK vote bank is intact under Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami,” AIADMK spokesperson Kovai Selvaraj told THE WEEK.  

Though the absence of the BJP during campaign was looked at as an advantage to the AIADMK by outsiders, the caste-wise vote polarisation has clearly helped the AIADMK. “The 10 percent reservation for the economically weaker section has worked. And the DMK has been exposed. It won the earlier polls with fake promises like jobs for one crore people, jewel loan waiver, etc. People have understood now,” says Selvaraj. 

“A victory is a victory. But contrary to the so-called popular perception that the DMK will win with a huge margin has gone wrong. The AIADMK, under the two-leaves symbol, put up a brave fight though the candidate was from an alliance party. The AIADMK has lost. However, the DMK has to pull up its socks in the coming local body polls or assembly polls whenever they are held, with the message that the results have given. The DMK hereafter cannot have the luxury of taking the minority votes for granted,” says senior journalist R. Mani. For the DMK, the victory has just added one more number to its flock in the Lok Sabha, but the road ahead is a difficult path.