India’s southern most Lok Sabha constituency, Kanyakumari, has suddenly acquired top priority, with big guns of three national parties — Congress, BJP and AAP — set to hit the campaign trail there for the April 24 elections.
It is the only constituency in the State that will see Congress president Sonia Gandhi (April 16) and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi (April 17) slugging it out. AAP’s Prashant Bhushan has already visited the constituency and exuded hope of its candidate S P Udayakumar wresting the seat. Bhushan might have got carried away by the overwhelming popularity of Udayakumar, a son of the soil who had been spearheading a protest against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant for three years from a village not too far from there.
But how is it that both the Congress and BJP are pinning hopes on Kanyakumari, the district named after the virgin Goddess, Devi Kanyakumari, when the State has been voting only the AIADMK and DMK alternately since 1967?
Congressmen believe that H Vasanthakumar, the richest Lok Sabha candidate in Tamil Nadu with a declared net worth of `283.13 crore, will romp home as it is primarily a Congress bastion — of the five MLAs in the State Assembly, three are from Kanyakumari.
BJP functionaries are confident of their State president Pon Radhakrishnan repeating his 1999 performance as they imagine the ‘Modi-wave’ has also reached the district, where the RSS as an organisation has flourished since the 1970s after the eruption of a dispute over the rock on which the Vivekananda Rock Memorial now stands.
However, the voting pattern or the socio-political dynamic does not work as simple as that in the communally polarised district, which has a Christian population of over 44 per cent.
For, apart from these three, who are all Hindus, there are three other Christian candidates in the fray — AIADMK’s D John Thangam, DMK’s F M Rajarathnam and CPM’s A V Bellarmine.
If history is any indication, since 1951, the constituency — earlier known as Nagercoil — has only returned a Nadar, be it Hindu, Protestant or Catholic.
If it initially voted for A Nesamony, a Protestant Christian, it has also favoured Thanulinga Nadar, Kumari Anandan, the elder brother of the present Congress candidate, Pon Radhakrishnan and the late K Kamaraj.
The person who won six elections consecutively from 1980 to 1998 was N Dennis, a Protestant. Of late, Bellarmin and the sitting MP Helen Davidon, both Catholics, have also been successful.
This time around, the Congress and the BJP expect the Christian votes to split between DMK, AIADMK and CPM. While the Congress hopes its sizeable vote bank would see it through, the BJP is confident that apart from its voting base remaining intact, more people will vote for Radhakrishnan, who is the son of the soil and a ministerial hopeful when Modi becomes prime minister.
But the locals say that the dreams of the two national party candidates could be dashed if the Christian community decides on a common candidate and backs him unitedly when the state goes to the polls.