DC Edit | Inroads Into TN, Kerala May Be Hard For NDA
As impressive as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s southern push for the BJP-led NDA is in the big splash made at a public meeting near Chennai, the superstar poll campaigner’s biggest challenge will be paving the way for the ruling party in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
While history has been stacked against any party not belonging to the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, the Kerala political scene has shown a similar preference for the CPM or Congress-led Left with a well-established alternative model until the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF opposed it in 2021.
Continuing the tradition of national parties of going to Tamil Nadu holding the coat of any of the Dravidian majors, the BJP-NDA has partnered with the AIADMK, which is the Opposition to the ruling DMK. While the association may not have helped the AIADMK in the 2021 Assembly polls, the unification of forces opposing the DMK is a plus point in the breakthrough this time after they went their separate ways for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
It is understandable that Mr Modi has attacked the DMK from its many fault lines, including the domination of the party by a single family, the problem of corruption, a long-standing issue in the nearly 60-year history of the Dravidian duopoly in Tamil Nadu, and the recent tendency of the free availability of drugs in the state to draw students and youth into its seductive embrace.
Opposition unity, which was the crux of the issue, proved elusive as Vijay, once again entering Tamil Nadu politics with a vengeance and entering the fray, emerged determined to go it alone with his TVK in the hope that he was given the relative youth of the future and the power to attract youth and women looking for a change from tired politics.
He resisted the pressures by postponing his much-awaited final film and prolonged interrogation by the CBI into the Karur stampede incident. DMK, which enjoys a clear advantage in any tripartite or quadruple contest in which Seeman’s party is one of the players, albeit a fringe one, is hoping to emulate Jayalalithaa, who won a second consecutive term before the reins came to Edappadi Palaniswami in 2016. Dividing the votes into two channels will again favor MK Stalin’s DMK.
Against multiple accusations, including interfering in spiritual matters and insulting Tamil culture, as in the Thiruparakundram temple deepam issue, the DMK has hit back using standard arguments in line with the Centre’s line of targeting non-BJP governments for sharing funds for Tamil education and development and starting work on the pending AIIMS project and saying that the promised twin-engine government is a junk that cannot work in Tamil Nadu. Beating the language drum while imposing Hindi also helps.
Despite a breakthrough win in Thiruvananthapuram, the BJP-NDA will also be swimming against the tide in Kerala, where its vote share fell from 20 per cent to 14 per cent as seen in the last local body poll. Maintaining momentum in the tripartite contest in Kerala will be as difficult as helping the AIADMK capture anti-incumbency votes in Tamil Nadu. Two of the three remaining strongholds against the BJP (the other being Telangana) appear to be impregnable, generally seen in most parts of south India as a North Indian party aiming for unitary rule in diverse India.
