AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami has tasked his colleagues, especially secretaries of the district units in Chennai, with taking “urgent and sustained” steps to retrieve lost ground in Chennai.
Mr. Palaniswami also expects his colleagues to demonstrate signs of the party’s revival in Chennai in next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
The AIADMK leader has taken this initiative as he is keen that the party does not meet the same fate that it did in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 2021 Assembly polls. The alliance led by the AIADMK came a cropper in 2019 and 2021.
In 2021, out of 37 seats in Chennai, Chengalpattu, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts, the party won only one - Madurantakam, a constituency reserved for Scheduled Castes. The party’s traditional rival, the DMK, and its allies had scored a comfortable victory in most places.
A perusal of the 2021 performance of the AIADMK-led front in the Assembly segments that constitute three Lok Sabha constituencies of Chennai reveals that the coalition fared better then than it did it 2019. This can be seen by the reduction of margins from 2019 to 2021, but there was still not much to cheer about as the AIADMK’s vote share was about 27% in Central Chennai and 25% in North Chennai against the DMK-led front’s 56% and 53% respectively. Only in South Chennai was the AIADMK’s vote share 35.3% against the DMK’s 43.8%.
However, there is a qualitative difference between the present and the past. As of now, the AIADMK is bereft of allies such as the BJP and the PMK, both of which had fought the previous two elections alongside it, while the DMK has been able to retain all its allies. Besides, in South Chennai, the BJP too feels that it is acquiring enough of a base, which may cause an upset.
A veteran of the AIADMK however says his party is confident of emerging successfully in South Chennai. Even in North Chennai, it has taken effective steps to improve the party’s following in constituencies such as Thiru Vi Ka Nagar and Dr. R. K. Nagar. “Perhaps, our weak link is Central Chennai where we have to work harder than in the past,” he acknowledges.
Virugai V.N. Ravi, former legislator of Virugambakkam and one of the AIADMK’s district secretaries in Chennai, expresses the hope that it is his party that will reap the benefit of anti-incumbency against the DMK regime. Besides, the break with the BJP will help his party “regain the support of religious minorities considerably, if not substantially,” he says.
