Sidelined AIADMK leader Dhinakaran wins Jaya’s prestigious constituency
Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, December 24
Sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran on Sunday won the prestigious RK Nagar bypoll with a margin that held key markers for all political players, including non-player BJP which is trying to make inroads into Tamil Nadu via the AIADMK.
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Dhinakaran won by a margin of 40,707 votes in the constituency represented by larger-than-life J Jayalalithaa, the late chief minister.
TTV Dhinakaran won with 89,013 votes, leaving AIADMK's E. Madhusudhanan to come a distant second with 48,306 votes. DMK's N. Marudhu Ganesh came third at 24651, while BJP's Karu Nagarajan won 1,417 votes at the end of counting.
Notably, RK Nagar has more women voters than men. Its 2,28,234 voters include 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders and the verdict emerging from there is now expected to lead to dramatic consequences in the state’s equally dramatic politics.
Political observers saw it as a rebuff to the ruling AIADMK regime headed by Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam. While the BJP may have been a nonentity in the state, it was backing the AIADMK, minus Dhinakaran and aunt Sasikala.
The verdict also shows that the most successful political party on date —the BJP — completely “misread” Tamil Nadu, they say.
The loss is expected to impact the EPS-OPS minority government with many predicting a “sooner than later” ouster. Already there are speculations of Dhinakaran staging a political coup.
The saffron party has been trying to make inroads into the state dominated by Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK and M. Karunanidhi’s DMK. The vacuum created by Jayalalithaa’s death provided it the chance. Senior RSS ideologue and Thuglak editor S Gurumurthy was believed to have acted as a peacemaker between the EPS-OPS factions with the ultimate aim to purge AIADMK of bad elements (read Sasikala, Dhinakaran and loyalists) and unite it with the BJP.
While BJP supporters claim “money power” and the release of Jayalalithaa’s video in the Apollo Hospital were the reasons for his win, for Dhinakaran the bypoll success could not have come at a better time.
As far as the DMK is concerned, a win would have lend credence to its campaign that people were fed up with the “horse-trading” regime of AIADMK. But the DMK’s loss is not as embarrassing as it is for the EPS-OPS faction of the AIADMK.
RK Nagar was considered a bastion of Jayalaithaa. And it has chosen Dhinakaran, who was claiming to be the rightful heir of her political legacy. With as many as 39 Lok Sabha seats, Tamil Nadu is a key player in national politics. It remains to be seen whether the DMK aligns with the BJP or the Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
