Chennai: It is 47 years since Tamil Nadu voted in India’s second non-Congress government (EMS Namboodripad led the world’s first elected Communist government in Kerala in 1957).
In the vastly changed dynamics since the hoary days of the birth of political opposition to the Congress, the one constant has been the power of the regional parties in Tamil Nadu. The trend remains here remains the same with the Dravidian majors holding sway in state and national elections.
The state’s cachet of regional powerhouses remains intact. Ms J. Jayalalithaa, first voted in as chief minister in 1991 in the wake of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and the consequent sympathy wave that also helped ally AIADMK, is expected to take anything up to 28 or 29 of the 39 seats according to sources in state intelligence. Expected to play second fiddle is the DMK with a handful of seats, including that of the 2G prime accused A. Raja, incumbent MP of the Nilgiris.
BJP, which has never been a major electoral force in the state save in some western pockets where its vote share is a shade higher, may get more votes than before in Tamill Nadu with allies PMK and DMDK contributing towards bringing in previously undecided voters in response to what is being spoken of as a Modi wave in the national sense.
With Anbumani Ramadoss most fancied to bag a seat, BJP-led alliance can hope to be on the board in Tamil Nadu while Congress sweats to see if it can get as much as one seat.
No pollster would stick his neck out to give the Indian National Congress, standing as a separate entity in the state for the first time in several decades, more than one of the 39 seats. Kanyakumari is being spoken of as the one seat where the Congress can at least hope to stage an upset.
Not even P. Chidambaram, who bid farewell to his finance ministry Thursday after his latest two-year stint in a key Cabinet position, dared to stand against what was perceived as strong anti-Congress sentiment felt in the state in the aftermath of the 2009 ending of the Sri Lankan civil war with the death of the Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.
The subsequent fishing rights problem that continues to defy solution has not helped either. The Centre and state stands on the Sri Lankan question are as alike as chalk and cheese.
Apart from the seat count, the voter numbers are going to be significant data for post-poll analysis as there has never been a multi-cornered contest like this in a Lok Sabha poll in the state. Regardless of the polarisation of minority votes, AIADMK’s rise from the nine seats of 2009 would probably be the highlight of the poll if the exit pollsters are not that far off their estimates of the popular vote this time around.
The most optimistic media-poll sampler survey projects a possible 31 seats to the ruling party while most others are in the range of a low to high 20s.
In the era of coalitions since V.P. Singh came through to form the first alliance government in the country in 1989, Tamil Nadu numbers have always bolstered the ruling dispensation at the Centre, be it the Congress-led UPA or the BJP-led NDA.
The bad vibes between the Centre and the state government in the last three years have led to a neglect of Tamil Nadu’s interest, the reason being principally political. If that has to change for the better with a just water share and power for Tamil Nadu, then a chunk of legislators supporting the ruling alliance in national capital would top a Tamil wish list.
In that sense, this Lok Sabha election is also a watershed for the state within national politics.
