Well-run race helped DMK

The DMK’s electoral triumph was very much on the expected lines so no one was surprised that M.K. Stalin, the party’s president and son of its late patriarch M. Karunanidhi, is getting ready to take over as Tamil Nadu’s next chief minister. But the results did throw up a few surprises, such as the way Seeman’s Naam Tamizhar Katchi surged in popularity with over six per cent votes and the BJP clinching four of the 20 seats it had contested.

In the electoral sweepstakes, the dice was loaded in favour of the DMK once the BJP tied up with the AIADMK. There is still the perception that the AIADMK may have done better, if not romped home, if it shrugged off the albatross around its neck. In a supreme irony, a coalition that pulled down the leader, stripping it of several seats, helped the ally make electoral gains.

It’s a different matter that the DMK took pole position way back in 2019. The Lok Sabha elections, where the state bucked the national trend, had set the mode for these Assembly elections. The DMK was seen as the lone formidable force that could stop the Hindutva juggernaut running roughshod over Tamil Nadu’s socio-cultural landscape. However, there were hiccups in cementing the old alliance of 2019, with the AIADMK endearing itself to people by effectively managing the first wave of Covid19. But the DMK overcame the setbacks, and eventually prevailed.

Whether it was the planning or the formulation of strategy (Prashant Kishor and his I-PAC were firmly behind it) or the campaign itself, the DMK started much before the Election Commission blew the poll bugle. Above all, the DMK, by falling back on its traditional ideology, emerged as a worthy combatant to forces inimical to local aspirations and played its part effectively, the BJP and NTK pulling off feats out of sync with the popular mood notwithstanding.