BJP’s poll equations may hit AIADMK vote math

CHENNAI: Supporters of the AIADMK may believe its leader J Jayalalithaa will be India’s next prime minister after sweeping the elections in Tamil Nadu, but they may still feel a bit uneasy with the action emerging out of the BJP, a marginal player in the state until now.

How can the BJP hurt the AIADMK? That too, when the former managed just above a 2% vote share, compared to the AIADMK’s over 38%, during the 2011 Assembly elections. (The AIADMK, in alliance with the DMDK and the Left, swept the polls).

The answer: by eating into AIADMK’s share, a scenario that rival DMK is betting on.

In Tamil Nadu, there’s little to divide the two main Dravidian parties – AIADMK and DMK – when it comes to vote share. In the 2009 Parliamentary elections, for instance, the AIADMK alliance scored just 5 percentage points lower than the rival alliance and, as a result, won just 12 seats while losing 27.

This time, an usually active BJP in Tamil Nadu is not only trying to cash in on what it calls the ‘Modi wave’ but is also trying to stitch together and lead a broad alliance of second-rung parties.

After managing to woo Vaiko’s MDMK, the BJP is now trying to get the PMK, Vijayakanth’s DMDK, as also a clutch of even smaller parties such as the Kongunadu Munnetra Kazhagam and IJK. “We are confident of forming an alliance by the end of this month,” says Pon Radhakrishnan, BJP state president.

What this means, based purely on past arithmetic, is that if the BJP can indeed manage to bring all those parties on board, it could easily score above 15% of the votes, if not more. DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan in a recent interview told ET in a recent interview that such a situation will work to its advantage, as BJP will more likely eat into the AIADMK votes.

Both the DMK and AIADMK have been choosy with alliance partners this time. DMK still has VCK while AIADMK has the Left parties. But from the broad alliances which fought each other in the 2011 elections, one player from either side is missing: DMDK (no longer in the AIADMK alliance) and Congress (no longer with the DMK).

This has opened up an opportunity for the BJP to lead a third front in the state. On one side of the perception spectrum, BJP believes it is on the verge of making history in the state, with Radhakrishnan saying the performance will be unprecedented.

Political analysts such as MR Venkatesh are optimistic about the BJP’s showing. He believes the party on its own can get a 10% share and its alliance up to 25%. “The chemistry could then take the numbers higher to over 30%,” he says.

However, others such as political commentator Gnani Sankaran and C Lakshmanan, assistant professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, believe BJP will continue to have a negligible presence in the state. Lakshmanan says BJP might not get more than a 5% share.

For the AIADMK, however, the point to note may not be just how much the BJP is able to manage but, more importantly, how broad its alliance is going to be.