CHENNAI: Kamal Haasan claimed on Thursday that his party, Makkal Neethi Maiam (MNM), is the third largest party in the State. But, if one goes by the vote share recorded in 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the party had secured much lesser votes than TTV Dhinakaran’s AMMK and Naam Tamilar Katchi. These two parties also contested without any major allies in the LS polls.
If one goes by vote share in previous elections, the Congress and the PMK too have higher vote shares in the State. This means, MNM is nowhere in the top six. According to the EC data, MNM secured 15,75,640 out of 4,18,25,669 polled votes. This is 3.77 per cent. NTK polled 16,45,222, which accounts for 3.93 per cent. AMMK candidates, despite contesting as independents with a symbol allocated in the eleventh hour, secured 5.32 per cent of the votes.
The Congress had secured 4.32 per cent votes in 2014 Lok Sabha polls when it contested without any major ally. The PMK had secured 5.41 per cent votes in 2016 Assembly polls, when it contested alone. MNM’s support base was also not widespread and concentrated only in urban areas. The poll booth-wise data shows that MNM secured zero votes in some of the booths. For example, in Kamal’s native Paramakudi constituency, his party did not secure even a double-digit vote in a total of 191 poll booths out of the 302.
The EC data shows that the party had secured only 3,874 votes out of 1,76,566 polled votes in the Paramakudi. In the Northern region, the party secured less than 5 votes in 106 of 330 poll booths in the Gummidipoondi constituency. The scenario is slightly different only in urban constituencies. An AMMK leader said “Our candidates secured more than double digit votes than MNM candidates in most of the parliament constituencies despite being allocated the common symbol just before we filed our nomination papers.
According to the votes secured in the last general election, we are the third-largest party and we have a wide-spread vote bank all over the State.” Murali Appas, a spokesperson of the MNM, said, “After the election, we analysed our vote share internally and found that we had secured a decent number of votes in more than 60 Assembly constituencies and we secured 1-12 per cent votes across the State. Besides, the key factor of the parliamentary election was different and Tamil Nadu went through the Go-back Modi mood. Even after that, we secured such a good number of votes. Hence, we are the third-largest party.”
Political observer T Koodalarasan said even to be considered the third biggest party, the margin with the runner-up must be small. But, in case of MNM, it is huge when compared with the Dravidian majors. Also, MNM’s vote share is very less compared to the 10 per cent DMDK secured when M Karunanidhi and J Jayalalithaa were in the fray.