SURVIVAL INSTINCTS
How N. Rangasamy gained leverage over the BJP in leading the NDA alliance to victory in Puducherry
Three-time chief minister N. Rangasamy is about to take charge as Puducherry chief minister for a fourth term. Joining the NDA has enabled the 73-year-old founder of the All India N Rangasamy Congress (AINRC) to muster support to form the first NDA government in the Union territory. While the AINRC has won 10 seats, the BJP won six and is part of the coalition government.
The Congress, whose government led by V. Narayanasamy was unseated just two months before the April 6 poll, fared poorly, winning just two seats, in stark contrast to the 15 it held in 2016. Its ally, the DMK, won six seats. A record six Independents have also been elected to the 30-seat legislative assembly, among them Gollapalli Srinivas Ashok, 28, a political greenhorn, who defeated Rangasamy in Yanam, an enclave of Puducherry in Andhra Pradesh. However, Rangasamy won from another constituency, Thattanchavady, where he polled 55.02 per cent of the votes.
In his first two stints as chief minister in 2001 and 2006, Rangasamy headed Congress governments. After being dethroned midway through his term in 2008, he quit the party and floated the AINRC, which he led to victory in 2011. Now, his primary concern as an NDA chief minister will be whether he will have a free hand to run the government. In his earlier tenures, he called all the shots. However, he may now have to make room for the BJP’s concurrence. Given his age, Rangasamy may be more accommodating, recognising that this is likely his last tenure as CM. “My government will give priority to industrial development, employment, education and health and strive for overall development. But the main task is to work with the Centre to tackle the Covid epidemic,” he says.
The quixotic Rangasamy famously went into self- imposed exile after his party was routed by the Congress in the 2016 assembly poll, which it contested alone. The AINRC also lost the 2019 Lok Sabha poll and two bypolls to the Congress and one to the DMK in the past five years. Unfazed, he adopted a ‘wait and watch’ strategy and was soon being wooed by not just the BJP, but also the DMK and the Congress, from which he originally broke away.
He hoped to go it alone, but joined the NDA when offered leadership of the alliance. The BJP, however, was non-committal about its chief ministerial candidate in Puducherry, which upset the AINRC. A tactful Rangasamy encouraged his supporters to contest as Independents from constituencies where his allies contested. It paid off as four of them won, giving him leverage. “The BJP has to play to the tune of Rangasamy. With the gradual decline of the Congress in Puducherry, the Dravidian parties may enter the fray to resist the BJP,” says Ramu Manivannan, head of the department of politics and public administration at the University of Madras.
For its part, the BJP aims to play a proactive role, taking part in consultations with the AINRC on the choice of ministers and the governance strategy. “We will make Puducherry a model state under the leadership of Rangasamy,” says BJP observer and election-in-charge Nirmal Kumar Surana. ■