When the Congress split in Tamil Nadu previously in the mid-1990s, there was considerable momentum with the breakaway faction led by under G.K. Moopanar.
While the current circumstances are different and G.K.Vasan’s charisma and claim to Kamaraj’s legacy are not so strong as his father’s, the future looks bleak for the Congress, if the past is anything to go by.
In the three years after the Tamil Maanila Congress was formed in 1996, the Congress drew a blank in every election. Except the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, in which the Congress did marginally better than the TMC, it was nowhere in the reckoning as long as the Moopanar faction was in existence.
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The Congress’s lowest ebb was the 2001 Assembly elections when its vote share dropped to 2 per cent. Yet, the TMC-Congress combine, as part of the AIADMK alliance, did well in the Assembly polls that year, after Moopanar backed Ms. Jayalalithaa to consolidate the secular forces since the DMK gravitated towards the BJP in 1999.
History also holds significant lessons for the newly formed faction. The TMC was able to make a dent in the State politics only as long as it was in alliance with a dominant partner — namely, the DMK. The 2001 Assembly polls were an exception to the trend.
This is notwithstanding the fact that once the TMC broke away from the DMK to contest on its own in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, its earlier gains were wiped out.
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