Challenging the Citadel

IN SALEM’S BUSTLING fruit market on Chinnaka­dai Street, the region’s famous imam pasand mangoes are only just beginning to make an appearance, selling for ₹250-280 a kilogram. But there is another kind of mango that is ubiquitous—the Pattali Makkal Katchi’s (PMK) election symbol, seen along with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) lotus on cars, walls and on posters. Together, they hope to change the script and conjure a new chemistry. PMK’s N Annadurai, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate, is up against TM Selvaganapathy, a former minister fielded by the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). He was once an All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) leader under J Jayalalithaa. Annadurai is also facing off against AIADMK’s P Vignesh, a young candidate seen as a proxy of party chief Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS), who is keen on wresting his home turf from DMK.

Of the six Assembly segments in Salem parliamentary constituency, four are with AIADMK, and one each with PMK and DMK. DMK won the MP seat with a margin of 1.47 lakh votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. PMK’s R Arul, who represents Salem West, had reached out to Palaniswami for a seat-sharing agreement on behalf of his party, but ultimately AIADMK failed to shake hands with its former alliance partner despite Anbumani Ramadoss being elected to Rajya Sabha with its backing. Both PMK and GK Vasan’s Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) have joined hands with BJP, leaving AIADMK, which recently exited NDA, to face the upcoming polls with a relatively weak alliance comprising the late actor Vijayakanth’s Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), Puthiya Tamizhagam, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), Puratchi Bharatham and the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB). The question being asked is, could AIADMK’s loss prove to be BJP’s gain as it tries to storm the Dravidian bastion or is it advantage DMK with the opposition split in two? “The Kongu belt remains our fortress under EPS’ leadership. The rural populace is unhappy about DMK’s broken prom­ises and urban voters are wary of BJP’s track record of dominating state politics. AIADMK will defi­nitely fare better than it did in the 2019 parliamen­tary elections [when it managed to win just one seat of Theni],” says senior AIADMK leader and former minister D Jayakumar. BJP, which had won the Kanyakumari seat in the 2014 General Election, drew a blank in 2019 with its vote fall­ing from 5.5 per cent to 3.66 per cent. This time round, BJP is banking on state party president K Annamalai’s aggressive politics and newfound celebrity status to reach a double-digit vote share, win a few seats, and maybe even unseat AIADMK as the prime opposition.

“The candidate does not matter in these parts. Edappadi anna’s name is enough and the two-leaves symbol is the only respectable one here,” says AIADMK’s Vignesh, after first declining to speak to the media without the permission of the party’s IT wing. He is a shy young man of few words, surrounded by burly men who readily speak up for him. “We are confident in most segments. In Salem North where we have to shore up our strength, R Singaram, former Dharmapuri MLA, has taken charge,” says a companion, campaigning in Chettichavadi gram panchayat, north of Salem city. The convoy drives through arid, rocky terrain flanked by magnesite mines. In Kurumbampetti, they offer a shawl to an old woman sitting by her door. She declines politely, pointing to the rising sun—the DMK symbol—painted on the walls of her house. Panjavarnam, 84, was so named because she was the fifth child. She lives with her husband Gurunathan and their two sons, who work at Dalmia Magnesite Corporation in Karuppur for a monthly salary of ₹18,000-20,000 each. “The DMK government gives us an old-age pension, as well as a monthly dole of ₹1,000 for every woman. Stalin is proving to be as good an administrator as his father. We have always voted for DMK. Salem has developed a lot both under AIADMK and DMK—there used to be just one bus to the city 20 years ago, and now there are eight, and they are free for women,” she says. At New Makkal provision store in Vellakkalpatti, S Arumugam blames the BJP government at the Centre for the untrammelled rise in prices of essentials like rice and cooking gas. “We have been running provision stores for decades and it is sad to see the common man is buying much less rice and fewer cylinders due to price rise. We are fortunate that our state education system is robust—we send our two children to the govern­ment school here,” he says.

Yet, complaints about non-delivery of the state government’s ambitious welfare schemes are common too. Forty-eight-year-old Jayakodi, a flower seller in Salem who lost her husband to alcoholism eight years ago, says she receives neither a widow’s pension nor the ₹1,000 monthly assistance that women are entitled to. “We have never seen the Salem MP and no one here got any of the benefits the DMK promised. We submit­ted many applications and eventually gave up. We voted DMK believing they would deliver on their promises,” she says. The terms of eligibility being unclear, many believe that they can receive the monthly assistance of ₹1,000 only if they do not have children or a house or a car—even if it is a vehicle they may have leased—and that they are required to offer a one-time sum of ₹15,000 as bribe. “Maybe we should give AIADMK a chance,” Jayakodi says.

While AIADMK has been hitting out at BJP, the latter has only targeted DMK in a bid to attract some of the former’s votes, especially those who are unhappy with the rise of the dominant Gounder caste within that party. “There is a notion that Edappadi’s influence in waning, especially in Erode and Tiruppur, and BJP wants to grab this opportunity,” says Raveendran Doraiswamy, a political analyst, while admitting that edging out AIADMK is not easy. “DMK has a good lead and AIADMK is a distant second as of now, with BJP putting up inter­esting fights in a few constituencies,” he says.

“In these parts, leaders change, voters don’t,” says R Jagannathan, a hardware store owner in Rasipuram, a town in Namakkal that voted for the Kongu Makkal Desiya Katchi (KMDK) candidate who contested on the DMK symbol. KMDK has been forced to replace its candidate S Suriamurthy, whose name hit the head­lines for controversial remarks endorsing honour killings, with VS Madeswaran—an issue BJP has successfully highlighted. Travelling through Namakkal, however, it seems to boil down to a good old-fashioned contest between the two-leaves and the rising-sun, each of which has a loyal base in the constituency.

TAMIL NADU, WITH 39 Lok Sabha seats, is going to the polls on April 19, with many constituencies includ­ing Salem witnessing a tri-cornered contest. PMK is contesting 10 seats as part of the NDA alliance and Congress is fielding candidates in nine constituencies as per its seat-sharing agreement with DMK. The MK Stalin-led DMK, which came to power in Tamil Nadu in 2021, has also allotted two seats each to the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, one seat to Vaiko’s Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), two (reserved) seats to the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), and one seat each to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and the Kongunadu Makkal Desiya Katchi (KMDK). BJP has allotted two seats to TTV Dhinakaran’s Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK), whose flag bears the smiling visage of Jayalalithaa.

Western Tamil Nadu, including Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Erode, Salem, Namakkal, Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri and the Nilgiris, with the exception of Karur, has traditionally contributed the largest number of Assembly seats to AIADMK. In the 2016 As­sembly elections, the party, led by Jayalalithaa, nearly swept the entire Kongu region and returned to power. In 2021, too, Palaniswami, a Gounder from the region, managed to win 36 seats here, cementing his position as leader of the party. This time, the BJP alliance is trying to shake things up by putting up strong candidates in several seats. In Dharmapuri, where PMK wields considerable influence, it has strategically fielded PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss’ wife Sowmiya Anbumani against DMK’s A Mani and R Ashokan of AIADMK. In Coimbatore, Annamalai is seeking a groundswell of support for BJP. In the Nilgiris, former BJP state president L Murugan is up against DMK’s A Raja in a high-stakes fight. In Tiruppur, BJP’s AP Muruganandam hopes to unseat CPI’s sitting MP K Subbarayan by raising awareness about the issues that plague the region’s knitwear industry and the lack of political will to provide any relief. After his roadshow in Chennai on April 9, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to campaign for these candidates in what will be his third public event in the Kongu region.

Women and the Scheduled Castes (SC) have emerged as an important constituency, especially as welfare schemes and inflation become poll issues. “Our schemes for women are the hero of this election. Edappadi is no monarch; DMK today can unseat him in his own Assembly segment, even though there is a strong vote bank that still exists for the two-leaves symbol,” says Selvaganapathy, who was disqualified as a Rajya Sabha member in 2014 on corruption charges. He represented Salem in Parlia­ment between 1999 and 2004.

In Tiruvachi, a village on the Salem-Kochi National High­way that falls in Erode district, SC women who have gathered to celebrate the coming-of-age of a girl say they benefit from state government schemes and have access to education but find themselves against a wall when it comes to job opportunities. K Saroja, 43, who works at a restaurant nearby, says the state government waived her ₹1 lakh loan against gold. Her 19-year-old daughter Priya, pursuing a BSc in IT at a local college, is less optimistic. “Most young people here who have completed their degrees are doing manual jobs. When we make representations to politicians, they ignore us because of our social status,” she says. Residents of Tiruvachi had appealed to the state government to construct homes under the PM Awas Yojana but they are yet to be sanctioned pattas. Lakhs of underprivileged youth like Priya, struggling to break social and economic barriers, may well decide the outcome of this election.

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