Tamil Nadu polls: Desperate Gambit

In the upcoming April 6 Tamil Nadu meeting election, Chief Minister E.Okay. Palaniswami is confronted with a considerably Herculean process, successful a 3rd consecutive time period for the All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Achieving this can match the report of social gathering founder M.G. Ramachandran, the actor-turned-politician whose radiating charisma and zeal for folks’s welfare gained his social gathering the meeting polls in 1977, 1980 and 1984. The social gathering at present holds 124 seats within the 235-member home. The chief minister’s ballot technique has centered on selling the AIADMK’s achievements previously decade whereas counting on his allies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), to focus on the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). In early March, the AIADMK signed a pact with the BJP, assigning it 20 seats for the meeting election.Since December 19 final 12 months, the chief minister has been campaigning tirelessly, as of March 23, he had addressed over 200 conferences, rallies and roadshows, protecting greater than 100 of the state’s 234 constituencies, starting together with his native Edappadi in Salem district. He has taken pains to current himself as a doer, highlighting initiatives equivalent to farm mortgage waivers for 1.64 million farmers, Rs 1,300 crore spent on the Kudimaramathu scheme for improved water administration, Rs 2,247 crore in reduction funds to farmers affected by pure disasters and Rs 9,300 crore disbursed to farmers by means of the state’s crop insurance coverage scheme. The AIADMK’s ballot guarantees embrace land and homes for landless farmers, larger training scholarships for Scheduled Caste households, six free cooking fuel cylinders per family per 12 months, mortgage waivers for girls’s self-help teams and a rise in Haj journey subsidies, amongst others. The social gathering has additionally been making considerably unbelievable guarantees, on March 21, campaigning in Tiruvannamalai’s Arani constituency, the chief minister introduced {that a} new district could be created, headquartered at Arani. On March 24, he introduced that one other new district could be created, with Palani as its headquarters. This is even if Tamil Nadu’s 13 unique districts have already been carved up into a complete of 38 to this point.The AIADMK’s allies have additionally been making tall guarantees. The BJP has promised to create 5 million new jobs and convey again complete prohibition, a ban on the open sale and consumption of liquor. It has additionally ramped up assaults on the DMK, publishing a booklet of ‘100 reasons to reject the DMK’. These embrace accusations of ‘anti-national activity’, declaring that in 2018, DMK chief M.Okay. Stalin had mentioned that he would welcome a scenario wherein India’s southern states got here collectively to demand the creation of ‘Dravida Nadu’. Describing this as a secessionist demand, the BJP has additionally focused the DMK for opposing the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and mentioned {that a} video launched by Stalin’s son and DMK youth wing chief Udhayanidhi contained a map of India that didn’t present Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as a part of Indian territory. The saffron social gathering has additionally accused the DMK of being towards growth within the state, citing its opposition to the Chennai-Salem expressway challenge. (However, the PMK, a part of the AIADMK alliance, has additionally opposed this challenge.) For its half, the PMK has additionally been combative. “[A third term for] the AIADMK will ensure democracy, while DMK rule would be a monarchy,” says PMK youth chief Anbumani Ramadoss. “This is the case not only with [state level] leadership, but in every district.”A query that many ask is that if these efforts might be sufficient to deal with anti-incumbency. Alliance companions don’t suppose it will likely be an issue. G.Okay. Vasan, chief of the Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar), says, “Even after 10 years in power, anti-incumbency against the AIADMK is quite low. [The benefits] of welfare schemes and development projects have reached the people.” Others say the AIADMK can have its fingers full coping with this downside, particularly within the roughly 30 constituencies the place it’s contesting towards each the DMK and the T.T.V. Dhinakaran-led breakaway faction, the AMMK (Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam). They additionally level to the polarisation inside the AIADMK as one other issue the chief minister should grapple with. Ramu Manivannan, head of the division of politics and public administration on the University of Madras, says, “More than the perception of the DMK as ‘the enemy’, the real challenges for the chief minister are V.K. Sasikala, Dhinakaran and O. Panneerselvam, who he can neither ignore nor acknowledge [as opponents]. His only hope is to buy votes, play up public fears about the DMK coming to power and hope that the BJP’s political-institutional manoeuvres [will do the job].”On this final level, there may be yet one more downside, the AIADMK and the BJP should not on the identical web page on the controversial CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act). While the AIADMK had initially voted for it in Parliament, the social gathering’s ballot manifesto, launched in mid-March, says that it’ll press the Centre to scrap the regulation, some extent that chief minister Palaniswami reiterated after submitting his nomination papers. In response, the BJP’s state IT chief, C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar, was reported as saying, “Knowing the Centre’s stand on [the CAA], AIADMK leadership should not [bring this up], it is an embarrassment to us.”The depth of the ballot battle seems to have led a number of senior AIADMK ministers like D. Jayakumar, S.P. Velumani, Okay.A. Sengottaiyan, Okay.T. Rajenthra Bhalaji and R.B. Udhayakumar to restrict their ballot outreach to the constituencies they’re contesting from. This is uncharacteristic of leaders who additionally maintain social gathering posts as district secretaries, Bhalaji, for example, has been seen solely doing the rounds in Rajapalayam, the place he’s contesting, with out entering into Sivakasi constituency, the place he’s the sitting MLA. Only Chief Minister Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam have been seen campaigning in districts throughout the state. In a number of constituencies, AIADMK cadre have additionally been reluctant to marketing campaign alongside BJP activists, and in constituencies the place the BJP is contesting, AIADMK cadre have been staying away. Analysts level out that this can be a hurdle to the potential switch of votes between the AIADMK and its allies.Political commentator N. Sathiya Moorthy says, “Even if the AIADMK wins, it will face serious challenges. Similar to the experience of Nitish Kumar in Bihar, the chief minister will have to manage the BJP deftly, without losing his party’s vote base and his own clout in state affairs. On the administrative front, he will have to find ways to raise huge funds to make good on his poll promises, in the face of mounting state debt, which now stands at Rs 5 lakh crore, against the Rs 1 lakh crore when his party came to power in 2011.”