AMMK cut votes of AIADMK+ in 21 seats

AMMK cut votes of AIADMK+ in 21 seats

D.Govardan@timesgroup.com

Chennai:04.05.2021

Politics may not be a pure play of arithmetic. But alliance arithmetic does play a role in electoral politics.

Take the case of T T V Dhinakaran’s AMMK. It has been annihilated in the assembly poll, with even Dhinakaran losing from Kovilpatti, and the votes the party polled got halved to10.57 lakh from the 21 lakh in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. However, election results show it played spoilsport for the AIADMK in not just south and central regions, but also in a few pockets in the north.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that AMMK candidates stood between the AIADMK alliance and victory in at least 21 assembly seats -- the votes polled by AMMK was higher than the margin of victory for the DMK alliance. While in a few seats, AIADMK alliance candidates could have romped home with a wide margin, in a few others they could have scraped through had AMMK been part of their camp.

The votes polled by the AMMK helped 12 DMK candidates and six Congress candidates, besides one each from the MDMK, the CPM and the VCK win. In the process,17 AIADMK candidates and three candidates of the PMK, besides one from the BJP, lost.

A month or two before the election process was set in motion and much before the release of V K Sasikala from the Bengaluru prison, the BJP’s central leadership had mooted the idea of accommodating AMMK into the alliance.

“While AIADMK coordinator O Panneerselvam was receptive to the idea, chief ministerEPS, based on feedback from few trusted ministers, opposed it. The BJP even mooted the idea of setting aside 30 seats from its quota to accommodate AMMK, but that proposal was rejected by AIADMK,” sources privy to the developments said.