CHENNAI: Northern Tamil Nadu, which had been the bastion of the DMK ever since the party first contested the Assembly election in 1957, has delivered a most dramatic verdict with Vijay’s TVK sweeping 44 of the 71 seats in the 11 districts in the Northern Tamil Nadu.
Of the 78 seats across 11 districts in the Northern district in Tamil Nadu, while TVK swept in 44 seats including 14 seats in Chennai, AIADMK led alliance won in as many as 19 seats, while the DMK-led SPA, which won 64 seats in the 2021 Assembly election, won just eight.
While the collapse of the DMK’s dominance in the Northern districts is stark, the SPA’s loss of 56 seats was entirely harvested by the new entrant Vijay’s TVK, which did not even exist five years ago during the 2021 Assembly election.
Nowhere is the shift more dramatic than in Chennai. Even when the former Chief Minister MG Ramachandran contested his first election in 1977 and reduced DMK to 48 seats, DMK held the Chennai seats firmly, winning 13 of the 14 seats in the city.
Now the TVK has won 14 of the city’s 16 Assembly segments, leaving the DMK with only Harbour and Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni, both by wafer-thin margins. DMK president MK Stalin himself has lost the seat to the debutant TVK’s VS Babu.
TVK seems to have drawn from the DMK’s urban youth, women and minority vote bank, leaving the party without a cushion in any segment of the city’s electorate.
In Tiruvannamalai and Villupuram, the AIADMK’s Vanniyar consolidation under the NDA held firm, suggesting that the reunited PMK under Anbumani Ramadoss delivered, even as S. Ramadoss’s splinter faction diluted the community vote in some pockets.
The minority-heavy districts of Vellore, Ranipet and Tirupattur returned mixed verdict and TVK’s presence split the anti-NDA vote just enough to cost the ruling party.
The DMK’s welfare delivery, the federalism pitch, the Delhi-versus-Tamil Nadu narrative, found fewer takers than the party had anticipated.
The Katpadi constituency in Vellore witnessed a major surprise on Monday during the counting of votes, as DMK veteran Duraimurugan was pushed to the third position.
In the initial eight rounds, AIADMK’s V Ramu was in the lead and Duraimurugan was in the second position. However, TVK candidate M Sudhakar steadily gained ground, moving from third to second position before eventually overtaking Ramu to secure victory.
Out of the five constituencies in Vellore, four were won by TVK and one by AIADMK. Katpadi, Vellore, Gudiyatham and KV Kuppam were won by TVK, whereas Anaicut was won by the AIADMK.