Tamil Nadu vote banks see drastic change

CHENNAI: For a long time, in Tamil Nadu, the urban, educated male have been voting by and large for the DMK while the rural, dalit female have been the AIADMK supporters. Not anymore. In the 2011 elections, the traditional vote banks of these parties are likely to undergo a drastic makeover.

Anxious about the high levels of awareness of the 2G scam among the urban voters, the DMK has offered five of the 16 seats in Chennai to its ally Congress. The party's move away from the urban centres is led by its president and chief minister M Karunanidhi himself. Karunanidhi is moving out of the city for the first time since 1967. The official reason is that the DMK chief desires to represent his native Tiruvarur constituency.

But critics don't buy that argument. "The awareness levels about the 2G scam are so high in the capital city that no senior DMK leader wants to take a risk by contesting in a seat in Chennai city," says an AIADMK supporter who holds a key post in one of the party's commercial ventures.

A look at historical data in urban seats shows the DMK isn't as strong as it used to be. Take, for instance, Stalin's earlier seat Thousand Lights. In 1996, he had won with a 70% share in votes. In 2006, his share had come down to 46%. Similarly, in the Harbour constituency, Karunanidhi's close aide K Anbazhagan won with a 70% vote share in 1996. In 2006, this share came down to 44%. In another DMK bastion, Triplicane, in 2006, AIADMK's Bader Sayeed handed a shock defeat to M Naganathan, considered the architect of the DMK sops-filled manifesto then.

However, the ruling party has been able to made inroads into the female vote bank, traditionally a stronghold of its rival AIADMK, through freebies, best exemplified by the party's promise to provide mixers or grinders during this election. The rural voters also seem to have been impressed by the DMK government's decision to waive farm loans in the co-operative sector.