The TN capital dotted with star constituencies | Economic Times

For the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) under MK Stalin, Chennai is the very heart of the high-stakes battle for Tamil Nadu, which goes to the polls on April 6. The coastal capital city has for long been considered a bastion of the DMK. This time, too, the party is banking on performing well in the city, fielding candidates in 15 of 16 assembly seats there, leaving one for ally Congress. “Chennai has always been a fortress of the DMK. We will do very well again this time,” party leader and MP Kanimozhi told ET Magazine. (Read the full interview - BJP not a challenger, fight’s between DMK and AIADMK: Kanimozhi, DMK leader)Two of the party’s most high-profile candidates are contesting from Chennai: party president Stalin, from Kolathur, which he has won twice; and his son, Udhayanidhi, who will be making his electoral debut from Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni, a seat his late grandfather and former chief minister M Karunanidhi had won thrice. “It’s a small constituency with a mix of Muslims and Brahmins. Karunanidhi held it before. The DMK would have calculated that this was the best place and time for the party to launch Udhayanidhi,” says N Sathiya Moorthy, head — Chennai Initiative, Observer Research Foundation. 81607221Before the candidates were announced, it was widely expected that Khushbu Sundar, the popular former actor who crossed over from Congress to Bharatiya Janata Party in October, would be contesting from Chepauk, which would have resulted in a high-decibel campaign. But in a curious twist, the ruling AIADMK , which is leading the alliance BJP is part of, allotted the seat to Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), making Udhayanidhi’s contest that much easier. “PMK does not really have a base in the Chepauk constituency. (Read the full interview - Even Opposition talking of BJP, shows we have arrived: Khushbu Sundar)Khushbu would have put up a tougher fight,” says Moorthy. Khushbu has instead been given the ticket for Thousand Lights, where Stalin had made his electoral debut and which is largely considered a DMK stronghold. She will be squaring off with Dr N Ezhilan, a doctor considered close to the late DMK patriarch. Khushbu denies that the seat, won in 2016 by DMK’s Ku Ka Selvam (he joined the BJP recently, fearing that he would have to give up the seat to Udhayanidhi), is more advantageous for the DMK. “If Thousand Lights was a DMK bastion, Stalin wouldn’t have gone all the way to Kolathur to contest. He would have stayed here,” she counters, adding that she plans to contest “with complete honesty… I am going to tell them what we can deliver, what is possible”. 81607222While Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami will be contesting from Edappadi in Salem and Deputy CM O Panneerselvam from Theni district, near Madurai, the most notable AIADMK heavyweight contesting from Chennai is possibly fisheries minister D Jayakumar, from Royapuram in north Chennai. In January, Jayakumar, a five-time MLA from north Chennai constituency, even challenged Stalin to contest from there, “if he has the guts”. When the AIADMK created history by defeating anti-incumbency under its late leader chief minister J Jayalalithaa in the last assembly election, Chennai was the sole consolation for the DMK. It won 11 out of 16 seats, possibly because the memories of the nightmarish 2015 floods were fresh in the minds of Chennai residents. Still, Jayalalithaa managed to hold on to her RK Nagar seat in the city, later won by her confidante Sasikala’s nephew, TTV Dhinakaran, when it fell vacant after her death. The City & the Village This time, too, analysts expect the DMK to perform well in the city. “Pre-poll surveys and the general mood in the city indicate that the DMK will be back in the picture, except for a few pockets like Mylapore, which might vote for a BJP candidate, if there is one, or the AIADMK, because of Jayalalithaa’s own identity as a Brahmin woman. By and large, even the expanded parts of the city, which have huge migrant population from rural areas — largely belonging to the middle castes — might also vote for DMK,” says S Anandhi, a professor specialising in caste and identity politics at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. Broadly, if one were to look at voting patterns, urban areas have been voting for DMK and the rural areas for the AIADMK’s two-leaf symbol. The urban support base of DMK has strengthened. The rural population flocking to Chennai for job opportunities also has the conviction that the city is central to developmental politics,” she adds. ORF’s Moorthy, however, argues that while AIADMK definitely has more of an appeal in rural areas, the traditional urban-rural divide no longer applies to present-day Tamil Nadu, one of the most urbanised Indian states. Political scientist C Lakshmanan argues that with many slum dwellers evicted in the name of smart city projects, the party has been losing the support of the urban poor in the metropolis and it can no longer bank on Chennai. 81607263Historic Links There is, however, little argument about the DMK’s historic links with the erstwhile headquarters of the Madras Presidency, starting with the party’s launch from Robinson Park (renamed Arignar Anna Park) in Royapuram in 1949 by CN Annadurai. “From the early 1950s, the city was essentially a DMK bastion. Let’s not forget that Anna himself was from Kancheepuram, not too far from Chennai. He was a prolific speaker and writer and many of his plays were staged in theatres in the city, which had a huge impact on the working population here,” says V Sriram, writer and historian. The Dravidian ideology, with its roots in social equality, attracted the city’s working class. The party was able to wrest control of many of the unions in the city’s industrial units and, in the anti-Hindi agitation of the 1960s, students from the colleges of what was then Madras played a key role. Even before Annadurai was elected chief minister in 1968, the party had gained control of the city corporation. A corruption scandal in the 1970s became the grounds for the AIADMK to suspend elections to the corporation when it came to power — and for almost 23 years, Chennai did not have an elected corporation council. Instead, decisions were taken by bureaucrats, says Sriram. This was finally reversed only in 1996 after the DMK came to power, with Stalin elected as mayor. “Under him, a lot of important initiatives were taken, including civic developments like flyovers, a river waters authority, etc,” he says. There was a kind of historic developmental politics, in collaboration with international funding agencies, which was well-publicised, says Anandhi. The metropolis thus became closely associated with DMK’s development promises, along with holding out the promise of caste mobility. While the city’s identity as a “dream land” for aspiring Tamils may no longer be what it was before, Sriram says it continues to be a cosmopolitan city, and now a magnet for blue-collar workers from faraway states likes Odisha and Bihar. Exceptions to electoral sweeps of Chennai for the DMK have been years like 2011, when it was reeling from charges of corruption and criticism of the dominance of Karunanidhi’s family, and the poll after former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. With no such obvious overriding factor in 2021 and despite CM EPS’s handling of the latest floods being appreciated, the DMK has a fighting chance to retain its hold over the city.