Tamil Nadu All Set to Vote Today

Chennai: All the 39 constituencies of the State, along with the lone seat in neighbouring Puducherry, are going to polls on Friday in the first phase of the nation-wide Lok Sabha elections that for the first time saw the ruling DMK in the State, particularly Chief Minister M K Stalin, spearheading a campaign to bring about a change at the national level, thus lending an acrimonious hue to it in its last stages.

In a break from the electoral traditions of the State, the BJP headed a third front to fight the usual alliances headed by the DMK and AIADMK, turning the three week campaign into an acerbic exchange of words, ideas and ideologies and displaying an unusual desperation to find a toe hold in the State, where it had won seats in the past only by riding piggyback on either of the Dravidian majors other than in 2014 when Pon Radhakrishnan romped home in Kanyakumari.

The BJP’s highly charged campaign brought the top brass of the party - Prime Minister Narendra Modi alone made nine visits to campaign for candidates of its alliance and launched a strident attack on the DMK and its leaders, both past and present – to the State. Modi also made a bid to appropriate the legacy of AIADMK icons M G Ramchandran and J Jayalalithaa by showering praises on their memory.

While the DMK managed to retain almost all its allies of the coalition that won 38 of the 39 seats in 2019 and also became a part of the national opposition coalition, INDIA, and ensured that its campaigners reached every nook and cranny of the State with Stalin himself visiting all the constituencies apart from his son and State Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, the main rival AIADMK was struggling to find allies.

The AIADMK that broke its ties with the BJP in September, 2023, finally could get only the DMDK, founded by the late Vijayakanth, as a major ally, though its general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami went on a whirlwind tour of the State as perhaps the lone star campaigner of the party.

The Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK), the only major party to field candidates in all the constituencies – 50 per cent of them women – also made its presence felt on the campaign scene, with its chief coordinator Seeman addressing meetings all over the State in support of his candidates. The NTK overcame an initial setback that came in the form of his old symbol being allotted to some other party. Then it was give the ‘microphone’ symbol, over which too there were minor issues.

Otherwise, 950 candidates are in the fray and the over 6.23 crore voters would exercise their franchise at nearly 68,000 polling stations from 7 am on Friday though the counting of votes would happen only on June 4 after all the seven phases of polling were completed.

Among the constituencies that gained some significance in the run up to the polls were Coimbatore, from where BJP State President is contesting. It also came into limelight following Rahul Gandhi’ visit to the constituency that saw him jump over a median to buy sweets for his ‘brother Stalin’ from a shop.

With the DMK’s IT wing publicizing the video that went viral, Rahul Gandhi’s singular visit to the State earned more prominence than all the campaigns undertaken by a slew of national leaders of the BJP, Modi, Amit Shah, J P Nadda, Rajnath Singh and Nirmala Sitharaman.

The campaign in general saw the raking up of ceding of Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka in 1974, parties like BJP, AIADMK, PMK and NTK taking about a rise in drug usage in the State with a vow to eliminate it if they were voted in. The PMK is focusing on Dharmapuri, where Sowmiya Anbumani is in the fray, while the DMK, AIADMK and Congress have fielded many old hands

DMK's Dayanidhi Maran (Central Chennai), A Raja (Nilgiris), Kanimozhi (Thoothukudi), BJP's L Murugan (Nilgiris), Tamilisai Soundararajan (South Chennai), former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam (Ramanathapuram), Congress party's Karti Chidambaram (Sivaganga) and AIADMK's J Jayavardhan (South Chennai) and AMMK chief TTV Dhinakaran are among the popular faces in the fray.

While the crux of BJP’s campaign was aimed at unseating the DMK by accusing it of corruption and practicing dynasty, the DMK had said that the election was about not who should win but about who should not by pointing to the alleged corruption and failures of the BJP government in the past 10 years. Stalin had also been repeatedly highlighting the BJP’s neglect of Tamil Nadu and winning over the State’s rights.