Chennai: Why and how Dayanidhi Maran lost Central Chennai is now being debated among the rank and file of DMK workers in the city. Central Chennai had always been a citadel for the DMK's first family and a lone win in this high profile and the smallest constituency would have placed DMK somewhere on the national political map.
Almost all the assembly constituencies in Central Chennai voted in favour of AIADMK this election. DMK poll managers were confident that Harbour, Chepauk-Triplicane and Egmore assembly constituencies would fetch them the traditional votes, but nothing worked for Maran, this time. Chepauk is where DMK president Karunanidhi usually contests from and Harbour is traditionally DMK general secretary Anbhazhagan’s spot.
“Amma’s campaign in Central Chennai at Wall Tax Road on the eve of the polls was electric. The speech reiterating the scams of the DMK-Congress front triggered the magic. We could sense the change among the voters in the Harbour constituency, and finally, we managed more votes in this assembly segment than our rivals,” said Ku. Seenivasan, former MLA of Park Town.
The Maran family, (late Murasoli Maran, nephew of DMK leader M. Karunanindhi was elected thrice and his son Dayanidhi Maran elected twice) have never lost this, the safest seat in Tamil Nadu.
During the first few rounds, it was Maran who was leading in a few assembly segments, like Harbour and Egmore, that has a considerable Muslim and north Indian population, but by noon the novice S. R. Vijayakumar of AIADMK started showing a marginal lead, resulting in the defeat of Maran by about 45,000 votes. There was no feud within the DMK, money and muscle power were visible during the Maran campaign.
The minorities said that they voted for Maran, and DMK strongman P.K. Sekar Babu did his best to ensure Maran’s victory to secure his political future, but nothing worked as Maran failed to connect with the public and was seen as a fair, elite, high profile family candidate of the DMK.
The failure of NDA candidate Raveendran to cross the 2 lakh vote margin also went in favour of the ruling AIADMK.
