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Congress would have made the difference to DMK-TMC in 13 Lok Sabha seats

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-Tamil Maanila Congress combine would have added 13 more to its low tally of nine Lok Sabha seats in the February polls -- with a fighting chance in seven others -- if political egos and electoral issues had not scuttled a broader coalition that looks possible now. Surprisingly, eight of the 'possible wins' and all seven 'fighting chances' would have been made possible by the 4.45 per cent votes polled by the Congress party, mostly independent of the its MGR-Anna DMK ally.

"Now you know why G K Moopanar and his TMC are keen on co-ordination with the Congress while continuing their DMK alliance," says a Congress leader, not wanting to discount the TMC founder's loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family, and his favouring the parent organisation even when the United Front was in power.

Naturally, the TMC would have gained more than the DMK, from the Congress votes. It would have won five more seats -- Cuddalore, the Nilgris, Palani, Ramanathapuram and Tiruchi -- while the DMK would have won Chidambaram and Sriperumpudur and managed to scrape through at Chinglepet. Incidentally, the DMK winner had recorded the lowest victory margin of 274 votes at Tiruppattur even without the Congress, and Chinglepet, with a 2,052-vote margin, would have only been a shade better.

Likewise, the Congress votes would have helped the TMC better than the DMK in giving a stiff fight to the All India Anna DMK-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance winner. While Arakkonam, Karur, Krishnagiri, Tiruchendur and Vandavasi would have seen the TMC in a better position, the DMK would have had a stronger base at Tindivanam and Vellore. Together, this would have meant that some of the DMK-TMC ministers at the Centre would not have lost, and some of the AIADMK combine's ministers now might not have won.

Where the Congress's respectable 78,000-vote tally would not have helped the TMC in real terms was Tenkasi, where M Arunachalam lost to the AIADMK nominee by 97,000 votes. Though this would have still given the TMC a 'fighting chance' in one more constituency apart from the five mentioned, here the scales were really titled by the presence of Puthiya Thamizhagam founder, Dr S Krishnaswamy, MLA.

Krishnaswamy converted his Devendra Kula Velalar Federation of the Southern Tamil Nadu Scheduled Castes into a political party of the downtrodden and minorities on the poll-eve, and polled 123,000 votes in this reserved constituency, which Arunachalam had won six times in a row. While he was said to be eager on an alliance with the DMK-TMC combine, given the southern Tamil Nadu SCs's aversion towards the AIADMK in the light of the Kodiyamkulam incident when Jayalalitha was chief minister, both Moopanar and the DMK supremo, M Karunanidhi, did not want to be seen as encouraging fissiparous, sectarian interests.

Two other constituencies where the Puthiya Thamizhagam candidates made a difference were Dindigul, where the TMC's parliamentary party leader, N S V Chittan lost, and Tirunelveli, where film-star Sarath Kumar was the DMK's star candidate. Only, in both these constituencies at least, the DMK-TMC combine would have still won, if only they had accommodated the MGR-ADMK of the former AIADMK minister and one-time Jayalalitha aide, S Thirunavukkarasu, MLA.

Thirunavukkarasu was keen on contesting his native Pudukottai seat, where he polled over 226,000 votes, ultimately. The DMK in particular would not relent in the absence of an unmentioned reciprocal accommodation of the CPI-M by the TMC at Madurai. With the result the combine lost both the seats. But for the 110,000 votes polled by the CPI-M at Madurai, Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy might not have won by a 20,000-vote margin.

All this not to mention Salem, from where Vazhappadi Ramamurthy was elected on his Thamizhaga Rajiv Congress ticket, as the nominee of the AIADMK-BJP combine. A former president of the state Congress, Ramamurthy trounced his TMC victor of 1996 by the second highest margin of 135,000 votes in the February poll -- the BJP winner at Coimbatore topped the list with a 144,000 margin.

Even the second runner-up at Salem was a Congressman. But the state Congress chief, K V Thangabalu, could muster only 45,000 votes, losing his security deposit like all 35 party nominees in Tamil Nadu. Yet, the party rebel, Mani Shankar Aiyar, at Mayiladuthurai, and the official nominees at Sivaganga and Nagercoil would have increased the TMC's victory margins.

"True, it's the winner who ultimately counts, and no amount of explanation and excuses would do," concedes a TMC leader. "But we were over-confident, and that included both the leadership and the cadre. If the former would not accommodate parties whose support we badly needed, the latter would not take the campaign seriously. It was particularly true of many of our candidates who, given their Congress background, were sitting on the DMK-TMC combine's laurels of 1996, without confronting the formidable alliance that Jayalalitha had put up in our southern stronghold by involving the BJP and the MDMK."

For all this, however, both the TMC and the Congress leaders concede that the latter's votes could not have accrued to the DMK-TMC combine in the February poll. "After all, the election itself was caused by the Jain panel row, where the Congress was pitted against the DMK," points out the TMC source. Adds the Congress leader: "Yet, there seems to be some scope for the three parties to work together in future, in the company of those ignored, and that's what I feel Moopanar is working towards."

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