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The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, says the party is confident of tying up with the DMDK. Its national executive member, L Ganesan, too exudes confidence of an alliance before the Parliamentary election.
The DMK ticks off MK Alagiri, son of its President M Karunanidhi and its strongman in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu, for passing comments against Vijayakanth, President of the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam, when the party is desperately trying to woo him. Shortly after pulling him up, the DMK suspends Alagiri, quoting various reasons.
Others, including the Congress, are hoping to rope Vijayakanth into an alliance.
What makes the Captain, as Vijayakanth is popularly referred to as, special?
In an election where every seat will make a huge difference and indications are that no single party or front is likely to get a clear mandate, the main players are going all out to stitch up alliances pre-polls, rather than post-polls.
After all, it is a matter of life and death — being in power or sitting in the Opposition.
Kept in suspenseVijayakanth has not yet revealed his preference. It is the DMDK’s performance in the 2011 Assembly elections that made the 61-year-old actor-turned-politician much sought after.
He fought that election as an ally of the AIADMK and won 29 of the 41 seats contested. More significantly, the DMDK pushed the DMK, which was in power between 2006 and 2011, to the third spot in the 232-member TN Assembly and got the status of the main Opposition party, with Vijayakanth himself becoming the Leader of the Opposition. In the 2011 election, the DMDK got nearly 8 per cent of the votes polled, performing better than the PMK, which was till then the most sought-after party.
In that election, the PMK contested 30 seats, managed to win in three and got slightly more than 5 per cent of the votes polled.
While the AIADMK, which won 150 of the 165 seats contested, got 38.40 per cent of the votes polled, the DMK got 22.39 per cent and won in 23 of the 124 seats contested.
The Congress, which fought the election in alliance with the DMK, got 9.3 per cent of the votes polled, but won in only five of the 63 seats it contested.
The BJP, never a significant player in Tamil Nadu politics, contested in 204 seats, drew a blank and polled just over 2 per cent of the votes.
Vijayakanth announced the formation of the DMDK (roughly translated as the National Progressive Dravidian Party) in September 2005 and contested the Assembly election the very next year. The party fielded candidates in almost all the seats. Only Vijayakanth won, though the party got over 8 per cent of the votes polled. In the last general election, the party did not win a single seat but got nearly a tenth of the votes polled.
More important than its own vote percentage, the DMDK has made strong inroads into the PMK’s stronghold, which makes an alliance with the Captain all the more important for the main contestants. Though Vijayakanth’s performance may not be as spectacular as the AAP’s in Delhi, his rise in Tamil Nadu politics has been quite significant, considering the fact that voter preference in the State has always been in favour of either an AIADMK-led front or a DMK led one.
The next few days should decide which side the Captain will join.
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