COIMBATORE: The AIADMK-led alliance was decimated in the western region of Tamil Nadu. The region is considered a fortress of AIADMK, to the extent that the ruling party fielded its own candidates in seven of the nine Lok Sabha seats here.
In contrast, the DMK which had fielded its own candidates in only four seats here, ceding the rest to its allies, swept the region.
When the seat allocation was announced by both parties ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, it was clear that the AIADMK had decided to bank on the West over its traditional stronghold of South Tamil Nadu, ostensibly due to the TTV Dhinakaran factor.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the AIADMK, which went it alone, had won eight of the nine seats in the West. The ninth seat, Dharmapuri, was won by PMK leader Anbumani Ramadoss as part of an alliance with the BJP. This time, with the PMK and BJP part of the AIADMK alliance, the party confidently fielded its own candidates in seven seats in the west leaving just Coimbatore for the BJP and Dharmapuri for the PMK.
However, on Thursday, the party was in for a huge shock. While the DMK won in the four seats, its allies won the rest with Coimbatore going to the CPM, Tirupur to CPI, Erode to MDMK, Namakkal to KMDK and Krishnagiri to Congress. MDMK and KMDK contested on the DMK symbol.
Considering that in 2014, AIADMK won by a margin of over 2 lakh votes in Erode, Krishnagiri, Namakkal, Salem and by margin of 1 lakh votes in The Nilgiris, Pollachi and Tirupur, the verdict has come as a huge blow to the party.
The loss in Salem seat, which includes Chief Minster Palaniswami’s Edappadi assembly segment, was particularly unexpected. The AIADMK alliance only had a glimmer of hope early in the day when Anbumani was leading in Dharmapuri but in the end, he too lost to the DMK.
On the other hand, the results, were a pleasant surprise to the opposition DMK, which even in 2009, when it won 18 seats in the UPA alliance, only managed to win four seats in the west -- The Nilgiris, Namakkal, Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri. In Krishnagiri, even AIADMK deputy coordinator K P Munusamy lost to Congress candidate A Chellakumar.
Meanwhile, Kamal Haasan’s MNM polled 1.44 lakh votes in Coimbatore where party vice president R Mahendran had contested. The party managed between 30,000 to 65,000 votes in other seats in the west. Similarly, Seeman’s Naam Tamilar Katchi secured between 3 to 5 per cent of polled votes in the nine seats in the region.