Lok Sabha polls 2014: A Raja eyes a comeback

NILGIRIS: There are around 11 lakh voters in the Nilgiri constitutency in Tamil Nadu’s verdant northern corner. Of them 45 percent belong to the backward Badaga community and around 25 percent are Adi Dravidas, the community to which former telecom minister and DMK candidate A Raja belongs. His victory margin in the 2009 elections was a respectable 85,000 votes. In all these numbers, the figure of
Rs 1,76,000 crores, the loss allegedly accruing to the exchequer due to the way 2G spectrum was allocated under Raja’s watch, is left unsaid.

At a small public meeting at Terawady, near the Tamil Nadu–Karnataka border, A Raja tells a moderate sized crowd, "I am confident I will get justice from the trial court. That is why I am contesting the elections to remove the political stigma in the public life."

After a couple of interviews to the press, he has been asked by the party high command to restrict his message to public meetings. "He is asking for the support of the people, he has been asked by the party not to create controversy further," said a close aide. Aides admit however to seeing a "tougher" Raja. While in Tihar, Raja called for books regularly, tracts by Karl Marx and Periyar, and marked his time. "He feels he will get justice from the people. After all that Rs 1, 76,000 crore went down to Rs 30,000 crore and then to Rs 0. People will absolve him," says Ravi a former Air Force man, now a close aide to Raja.

At the DMK’s party office in Ooty, around 60 town secretaries of the party are being briefed on booth level duties, tea is being drunk ana telecast party treasurer M K Stalin’s meetings in Thanjavur is being watched. "A Raja will win this time. More than anything else he has helped people out in their troubles," said Raja, a DMK worker, surprisingly fluent in Hindi.

According to others, Raja has been a sort of Santa Claus around Ooty for the better part of the year. From his personal wealth he has distributed Rs 1 crore to the Bharathiar University in Gundalur, spent Rs 20 lakh to get a burial ground in DMK district joint secretary Nazir Ali’s area, and gave Rs 2000 plus two blankets to each family affected by recent flood even in the most tangential way. Expiation hasn’t come cheap.

At his nearest rival, AIADMK candidate Gopalkrishnan’s office in Conoor, the activity is less feverish. The party had done badly in the 2009 polls, ceding second place to the Vaiko led MDMK. "This time we will win," is all he said while at the same time working phones to get his voters into the hill town before polling day of April 24th. S Gurumoothy of the BJP, who barely polled votes in single digits in several booths in 2009, is hoping for a vote transfer from Vaiko’s party, which is now in alliance with the BJP. The Congress candidate, R Gandhi is not considered to be in the reckoning at all, as he is from Namakkal, an outsider.

Raja is counting on an electoral absolution, democracy to validate his alleged sins.