TTV Dhinakaran was firmly on the way to an emphatic win in the RK Nagar byelection, which could only spell trouble for the stability of the Edapadi K. Palaniswami government. TTV who is contesting on the “Pressure Cooker” symbol as an independent appears to have virtually cooked the AIADMK’s goose by cornering more than 50 per cent of votes at the end of the second round.
By winning the seat held by Jayalalithaa, TTV can now claim that he is the true successor of Amma and not the ruling AIADMK, even though it might have the party name, symbol and government with them. “This government will fall in the next three months as it does not have the support of the people,” Dhinakaran told reporters in Madurai as the results were coming in. The RK Nagar result could actually prove to be the tipping point for the EPS government he promised.
This is the first time in many decades that a ruling party has been worsted in a byelection and that too by an independent. The ruling party volunteers tried to disrupt the counting after Dhinakaran’s lead kept increasing in the second round pointing towards a convincing win. The election officials suspended counting for half an hour, beefed up security and resumed the counting of votes.
While there had been allegations that both the AIADMK and TTV resorted to massive bribing of voters giving away Rs.6,000 to Rs. 10,000 per vote, the DMK’s tactical shifting of its votes seems to have helped the TTV camp too. By coming up a poor third the DMK, which was expected to win helped by a split in the AIADMK vote bank, the DMK looks to have transferred its committed votes to Dhinakaran.
“Losing a single byelection is not going to cost the DMK anything especially when the prestige battle is between TTV and EPS. So the DMK asked its committed voters to back Dhinakaran in the hope that it would lead to confusion in the ruling party the leadership of EPS and OPS would be questioned by the cadres and MLAs,” observed political commentator Ravindran Duraiswamy.
He, however, cautioned that winning a single byelection, with all his energies and resources concentrated in one seat was easier than winning a general election. However, TTV supporter Nanjil Sampath recalled that MGR too had started with a victory in the Dindigul Lok Sabha byelection in 1973 after he had started his party in 1972 and went on to unseat the DMK. “Similarly the RK Nagar win will be used as a launch pad for Dhinakaran’s future ascent in Tamil Nadu politics. It is he who would be the challenger to the DMK and not the pretenders like EPS and OPS,” said Sampath.
“Dhinakaran’s affable and unruffled personality and his ability to face the media without any hesitation and answer their questions lucidly appears to have endeared himself to voters. A win in RK Nagar would definitely announce the arrival of TTV as a political force,” said political analyst Sumanth Raman. Psephologist Arun Krishnamurthy pointed out that Dhinakaran managed to turn this byelection into a battle between him and the rest. “Since he became the focus of the byelection, the AIADMK and DMK only wanted to get the better of him, which actually helped him take the pole position,” he explained.
EPS and OPS can now only hope that the glue of being the ruling party and controlling the government would hold back the hundred odd MLAs who are backing the government. Meanwhile, the 18 MLAs of TTV camp, who presently stand disqualified, would be hoping for a favourable verdict from the High Court in January which they feel would open the floodgates leading to more desertions from the EPS camp.
The BJP was trailing even behind the candidate of Naam Thamzihzhar, a fringe party and even NOTA proving that the party’s decision to contest was a tactical error exposing its abject weakness in the state. When the state Assembly meets in January the EPS government would find itself on the back foot as Dhinakaran, the lone ranger could emerge as the voice of the opposition, even louder than the 89 MLAs of the DMK.
