TTV Dhinakaran's call to the Congress to break up with the DMK and tie up with him, is aimed at consolidating the traditional anti-BJP votes. The stronger message is to all anti-BJP constituencies in the state, especially the minorities and traditionally aligned sections of the Dalit community, that he could be trusted to take forward an 'anti-Hindutva' agenda more seriously than anyone else, the DMK included, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
With election campaign ending in Tamil Nadu before it goes to polls on Thursday, N Sathiya Moorthy lists a few questions uppermost in the minds of voters.
'Of equal importance was the AIADMK's precarious assembly membership, what with 11 of its MLAs including deputy chief minister OPS facing court cases for disqualification and by-elections due in another 21. To shore up the party's numbers for anticipated eventuality on the 11-MLAs' front, the AIADMK leadership in general and chief minister EPS in particular, were even more focussed on assembly seats than LS seats, just now,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
More than 5.79 crore voters will seal the fate of 3,740 aspirants including arch rivals Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and Dravida Munnetra Kazagham president M Karunanidhi, as the stage is set for polling in 233 assembly seats in Tamil Nadu under tight vigil on Monday.
The DMK has Stalin and Stalin alone as the key campaigner. The rest of them all, including half-sister Kanimozhi, are tied down to their own constituencies while those like party treasurer and former minister S Duraimurugan, to those of their children's constituencies.
Thursday's protests across Tamil Nadu was less pro-Cauvery and more anti-Modi in character and content -- including in it various development projects in the state that are perceived as 'environmentally unfriendly' and hence 'anti-Tamil', says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Results coming out of Lok Sabha polls show that parties like Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party and Tamil Nadu's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam managed to corner a large number of votes but failed to convert them into seats, while parties with lesser vote share have got seats to show in their kitty.
Thousands of police personnel have been deployed across the state to maintain law and order.
The protesting fishermen have refused to accept the body of the fisherman unless a central minister visits the island and gives them an assurance that such incidents would not happen again, Rameswaram Fishermen Association President S Emiret said.
Come May 16, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance will have more seats from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh than any formation mustered by the Congress, notes T V R Shenoy.
The deaths of Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi within months of each other neutralises any sympathy factor their parties may hope to gain from. What's more, by removing charismatic leaders from the fray, it also levels the field for others, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The DMK combine has won 37 of the 38 LS constituencies in Tamil Nadu, and bagged 13 of the 22 assembly bypolls. What swept away the AIADMK-BJP alliance in the southern state was not dravidian ideology but job loss and graft bias, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
With Tamil Nadu's electoral fate decided, all eyes would now veer round to the pending 'disproportionate assets case' against Jayalalithaa in the Supreme Court, and Stalin's own future within the DMK, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
For Rajnikanth, who the BJP is wooing, politics looks more likely to happen in 2019, although his friend Kamalahaasan could afford to wait a little longer, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The campaign has gathered steam for the June 27 bypoll contest in Tamil Nadu featuring Chief Minister Jayalalithaa as All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam workers are going all out to ensure her victory against the lone Communist Party of India challenger.
Even as political parties in TN have decided not to field a candidate against CM Jayalalithaa in the assembly by-election, the BJP's ambivalence has shown up once again.
While Bharatiya Janata Party's countrywide vote share shot up by over 12 per cent at the expense of other parties, the chart throws some contrary pictures as parties like Bahujan Samaj Party got no seat in spite of third-highest vote share, but Trinamool Congress and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam clinched over 30 seats each with less than 4 per cent vote share.
In an age when the electorate is increasingly impatient and changes governments every 5 years, how did the Tamil Nadu chief minister beat anti-incumbency?
Though the 2019 alliance talks, if any, are a long way off, CM Jaya's current state of health and her long hospitalisation maybe a facilitating factor for the AIADMK to consider any BJP initiative favourably at the time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
It is possibly the first time that a regional party with not even enough numbers to move a no-trust motion has taken the lead, and others are following it. The hints of a no-trust move first came from the YSR Congress, and the ruling TDP could not have stayed on together when the question is another version of 'Telugu atma gouravam' - an issue that fired its founder N T Rama Rao in the 1980s, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
There is no denying that the Deepa identity has overnight caught the people's imagination across the state. But converting that into an imagery and from there as support and vote-base is a different matter altogether, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
In one village, a woman asks, "They are always showing cash seizures on television, you think some of it will escape and we will get money as usual?" "Only 1 percent of cash is actually seized, the rest has arrived, you don't worry," a party worker assures her. Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar reports on the election in the southern-most tip of the country.
AIADMK's Jayalalithaa won three assembly by-elections from her hospital bed. However, the DMK heir's decision to disempower second-line satraps, who were running personal fiefdoms in their districts, and his fresh approach, could prove beneficial in the next polls, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
With Tamil Nadu's economy getting increasingly debt-ridden with each passing budget, any concession to the Centre on the tax front, the state government has argued, would only help forgotten 'minor parties' to start hoping of a revival, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The last time Tamil Nadu seriously voted on pre-poll promises was in faraway 1967.
Fulfilling the promises made in the manifesto, a resurgent Opposition in the state assembly, impending local body polls... Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa may have made history by winning two assembly elections in a row, but the real test begins now, says N Sathiyamoorthy.
Barring one of the earliest surveys of the kind in the country, in 1989, none has proved right in Tamil Nadu's case, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
O Panneerselvam is the first chai-wallah to become chief minister in the country. Gujarat's Narendra Modi, the better-known chai-wallah to become chief minister, followed Paneerselvam around a fortnight later in 2001. The parallel should end there, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The deadlock over finalising alliances has had a deleterious effect on the candidates of every party. The delay in alliance conclusion has also sent out confusing signals to the grass-roots who are unsure who will be their party candidate, or which party within an alliance will be allotted a particular constituency, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Karnataka government is divided over filing an appeal in the Supreme Court against the acquittal of former Tamil Nadu chief minister. N Sathiya Moorthy analyses the possibilities
Now that Tamil Nadu's tallest politician is no more, it remains to be seen how new political re-alignments could shape up, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'We have about Rs 4 lakh crore debt on a state budget of about Rs 1.5 lakh crore.' 'We are in a debt two-and-a-half times our annual budget,' says the banker who would have been Tamil Nadu's finance minister had the DMK won.
The presence of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was not the only reason why Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa stayed away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's swearing-in ceremony, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Modi's NDA is good enough to give a psychological boost to the once 'untouchable' BJP and Modi but if the NDA doesn't get a majority on its own, then walking the last mile will be the greatest challenge of this election for Modi, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances