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AIADMK woos TMC for byelection and beyond

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

The All-India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is busy wooing the Tamil Maanila Congress for its 'grand alliance'. Such an alliance, it hopes, would make it invincibile in the assembly poll next year.

Byelections are due now in Nellikuppam, Tiruchi II and Arantangi assembly segments. The first two have been caused by the death of sitting DMK members and the last by the resignation of its ally and MGR ADMK leader S Thirunavukkarasu being elected to the Lok Sabha last year.

AIADMK chief Jayalalitha wants her candidates to contest all three seats for the alliance in which the Congress, the two Communist parties and the Indian National League are allies. The one exception she is willing to make is the allocation of Nellikuppam seat if the TMC-led third front is ready to do business with her. The expectation is for Dalit Panthers leader R Thirumavalavan to contest the seat on the TMC symbol, as he had done in the Lok Sabha poll.

Though the TMC front had lost miserably in the Lok Sabha poll, an analysis of the results show that it can tilt the scales in at least 50 assembly segments, which is crucial to the final tally in next year's grandslam. While a section of the TMC is keen that the party should join hands with the AIADMK before it is too late, an influential group still feels that it should not bury its call to restore "Kamaraj rule in 2001 so very completely, and so early."

"There is a uniform opinion against the DMK, caused both by the anti-incumbency factor at the ground-level, and also its local-level leaders abrasive approach to our men," says a senior TMC leader. "There is also the unsurmountable question of the DMK aligning itself with the BJP. This naturally puts off the Congress whose traditional vote bank we would like to have on our side."

If the TMC seems to have thus closed the DMK option, which it had kept open during the Lok Sabha poll for 'possible future use', the party is divided over the AIADMK option.

"It is a question of basic principles, and our leadership is reluctant to compromise on the question after making such a hue and cry over Jayalalitha's corruption in 1996, over which we even walked out on the Congress parent," the leader holds.

To that extent, says he, "any question of joining hands with the AIADMK, now or later, will have to be linked to merging the TMC with the Congress as that is the only difference between us two. Also, if we can compromise on corruption, why not on communalism, as the very same voters who some claim are back with Jayalalitha have also voted the BJP in the Lok Sabha poll."

This powerful section also sees the prospects of the "TMC claiming its 'natural constituency' of the growing ranks of middle class voters, which had gone the BJP way in the Lok Sabha poll, when assembly elections are held next".

Given party president G K Moopanar's public image as a clean politician, and that of leaders like P Chidambaram as efficient ones, "we can still make a great impact in the asssembly poll next year if we put our heart into it," says this leader.

"However," he adds, "our aligning with one Dravidian party or the other could lead to our losing out this emerging vote bank to the BJP for good. Having voted the BJP twice in two Lok Sabha elections, those voters have no cause for doubting their decision. Worse still, we will have to bear the cross if the BJP emerges as a strong political force in the state in the new era after dubbing it communal all through our political career."

Against this is the argument that the TMC has to learn its lessons from the Lok Sabha poll, and put its dreams of restoring Kamaraj rule in the backburner all over again.

"Sure enough, we have not been able to capitalise on the voter's goodwill of 1996. Our weakness has been exposed in the recent Lok Sabha poll. If we contest alone there would be no TMC left," says a strategist of this camp.

There are those who take the middle path who argue that the TMC should not contest the byelection now. Their argument is that all three seats had been contested by the DMK ally in the 1996 poll.

"The byelection constituencies are not the ones where the TMC votes made the difference in the Lok Sabha poll barring Nellikuppam. The failure of any new alliance with the AIADMK now could doom the alliance forever," says a leader from this camp.

While the DMK alliance is counting on the 60,000-vote margin posted by Thirunavukkarasu in Arantangi segment and the 22,000-vote margin of Bharatiya Janata Party's Rangarajan Kumaramangalam in Tiruchi II in the Lok Sabha poll, the AIADMK has other calculations.

"The votes scored by Thirunavukkarasu and the BJP are not transferrable," says a party leader. "The first was person-specific, and the second, issue-specific. Neither parties could transfer their votes to another candidate from its own ranks."

In this context, the AIADMK counts on the "mounting anti-incumbency factor that is working against the ruling DMK, particularly in the rural areas."

The party leader also refers to the Pudukottai Assembly byelection of 1996, months after the AIADMK had been routed in the general elections.

"We have cadres who worked like honeybees and brought down the losing margin from 22,000 votes to 12,000 in a matter of months. Now our morale is high after the court discharged Jayalalitha in the Tansi case. It will be reflected in our campaign, only that the TMC's presence would make us even more formidable, now and next year."

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