With local poll win, DMK boosts standing
The recently concluded urban local body elections in Tamil Nadu, conducted after a gap of 11 years, have sealed the DMK’s popularity in the state. Garnering a vote share of 42.9%, an improvement of 5% over its performance in the state Assembly elections last year, the party, led by Chief Minister M K Stalin, now faces the huge responsibility of fulfilling the expectations of the people. While it is par for the course for voting in civic polls to favour the ruling party in the state, the people have supported it overwhelmingly at the national (2019 Lok Sabha polls) and state levels (2021 Assembly elections) as well. Stalin has shown he is acutely conscious of this responsibility and has been quick to nip any high-handedness or misbehaviour of party members in the bud over the past years. It is also to be noted that, despite its own strength, the DMK has nurtured its alliance with the Congress and other smaller parties alive for the third year, boosting its claim of maintaining an ideological opposition to the BJP, an issue on which Stalin campaigned, unusually, for civic polls.
On the other hand, the principal opposition party, the AIADMK, which contested the polls without two key allies—the PMK and the BJP—faced a drubbing, seeing its vote share decline from a respectable 33.29% in 2021 (after a decade in power) to 25.47%. However, claims that keeping its alliance with the BJP alive would have improved the AIADMK’s performance are overstating the saffron party’s impact. The AIADMK’s ties with the national party were more a function of necessity. Its own cadre believed that the alliance had hurt its standing with minorities in the state, effects of which may have affected its performance in the civic polls too. The AIADMK leaders must return to the drawing board and chalk out a course for the future amid what could end up becoming an existential crisis for the party.
As for the BJP, its choice to test its strength has certainly paid off. Contesting in more seats than even the DMK, it secured a vote share of 4.92%, the third highest in the state at this point. Regardless of its opponents’ rhetoric that TN had again shut its doors to the party, its performance suggests it could well have room to grow in the state.