DMK may reap a grim harvest in Coimbatore
Coimbatore is one of the few
constituencies from where the Bharatiya Janata Party
hopes to make a maiden entry into the Lok Sabha from Tamil Nadu.
What impact the weekend's serial bomb blasts -- which claimed over 80
lives -- will have on the February 22 polling is a matter of
conjecture.
Even before this ghastly incident, the BJP had been attempting to
cash in on the communal clashes in this textile city.
Known as the Manchester of South India for its textile industry,
this city has of late attained notoriety as a hub of Islamic
fundamentalism.
The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which has replaced
M Ramanathan, member of the dissolved Lok Sabha, with K R
Subbaiyan, is fighting hard to retain the seat.
The BJP has fielded local hosiery manufacturer C P Radhakrishnan.
The DMK is largely dependent on the Left parties, which have a
sizeable vote bank in various pockets, particularly in Tirupur
assembly segment.
The party had originally offered the seat to the CPI-M which,
however, walked out of the DMK-TMC front.
The Marxists initially fielded their own candidate here, but
withdrew in support of the combine at the eleventh moment, thus
sparing further embarrassment to the DMK.
However, it made the best choice by nominating Subbaiyan, who
has a clean image.
While the Communist Party of India, a constituent of the
DMK-TMC combine, is working hard for the DMK candidate's victory,
the same spirit is lacking among CPI-M cadres, who are sore
over the raw deal meted out to the party in the seat-sharing
exercise.
Subbaiyan said Chief Minister M Karunanidhi had deployed the
army to contain violence in the region which had helped instil confidence in the people.
The BJP, led by its state general secretary H Raja,
who is in charge of the constituency, is going all out to exploit the
resentment among the Hindus against the DMK, especially local
legislator C T Dhandapani and Ramanathan, for its alleged
patronage to the Al-Umma and its leader Kovai Basha and for their alleged intervention
in police action against Muslim fundamentalists.
The seat was held by the Congress for three terms, from 1984 to
1991. The CPI won the seat in 1977 and the DMK in
1980. In 1996 Ramanathan drubbed the Congress's
C K Kuppuswamy, bagging 57 per cent of the votes cast. Kuppuswamy
got 25 per cent of the vote and polled 201,020 votes compared to
Ramanathan's 463,807.
Coimbatore East, Coimbatore West, Palladam, Perur, Singanallur
and Tirupur are the assembly segments in this constituency, with a
total electorate of 1.494 million.
UNI in Coimbatore
EARLIER REPORT:
The constituency no one wants
Elections '98
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