CHENNAI : Immaterial of which party wins the elections in Tamil Nadu, the postal ballot – a system through which government officials and policemen on election duty away from their constituency, vote – votes of late are in favour of the DMK. So much that in the 2016 Assembly elections, results in three constituencies swung due to the postal ballot.
In Cheyyur, Tindivanam and Thiruvidaimarudur the AIADMK secured more general votes than the DMK. But when the postal votes were counted, the ruling party lost all three seats to the DMK. In Cheyyur, DMK’s RT Arasu defeated AIADMK’s A Munusamy by a mere 304 votes. Though he was trailing by 71 votes behind his AIADMK counterpart, he secured 375 postal votes, making him the winner.
Similarly, in Thiruvidaimarudur, DMK’s Govi Chezhiaan was trailing by 28 votes behind AIADMK’s U Settu. However, he secured 720 postal votes compared to Settu who got just 120, tilting the game in his favour. In Tindivanam, DMK’s Seethapathy was trailing behind AIADMK’s SP Rajendran by a margin of 623 votes. But she secured 1,049 postal votes and beat Rajendran, who got just 325 postal votes.
Not just these three seats, across the State AIADMK, which won the election with substantial margins, could beat DMK in postal votes in just three segments –Royapuram, Thirumangalam and Usilampatti. Interestingly, in Edappadi, the DMK candidate who came third secured more postal votes than Chief Minister Palaniswami, who won from there. The trend was similar in 2011 Assembly elections when DMK polled the most postal votes in all but four constituencies – Sholingur, Vedaranyam, Peravurani and Melur.
In the 2014 parliamentary elections, when the DMK did not win even a single seat, it got the highest postal votes in 22 of the 39 segments. A former senior election officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, rules out the possibilities of any foul play. “If DMK was in power when the elections were held, we could assume it could have misused its powers to influence postal voters. But that isn’t the case here,” he says. “This, probably, indicates that most government employees are inclined towards the DMK, for whatever the reasons.”
However, N Gopalaswami, a former Chief Election Commissioner, says it would be inappropriate for one to say that postal ballots, which account for less than 2-3% of the total votes, decided the victory of a candidate. He says when the election is very closely fought, the level of scrutiny by representatives of candidates and the alertness of officials is very high. “Postal ballots are counted before the counting of general votes. So, when there is a close fight, the representatives give extra attention to the postal ballots to see if the ballots had been received in time, as they are supposed to reach before the stipulated time.”