Tamil Nadu: DMK won the battle but lost the war, for BJP it is vice versa

DMK won all the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu.

Though the DMK-led INDIA bloc in Tamil Nadu is poised for a landslide victory winning all the 39 seats and is set to contain the BJP's foray in the state, it does not provide enough for the ruling DMK and Chief Minister MK Stalin as it looks like the Narendra Modi government would continue at the centre, putting administrative and legal hurdles in its path.

Although neither the BJP nor the AIADMK won any seat, the bad news for the BJP is that it polled less than half of what the AIADMK did. The BJP strategy was to sacrifice its immediate interest in maximising its yield in terms of seats from Tamil Nadu for a long-term project of increasing its vote share. But it failed on both counts. There was nothing in terms of seats and just over ten percent in terms of vote share. The scenario for the future, where it grows at the expense of the AIADMK, doesn’t look any closer after the dismal show in 2024.

What NDA-led Centre Means for DMK

With NDA seemingly back in power at the centre, the DMK government would have to deal with a more aggressive Governor, RN Ravi, who has stalled legislation and stirred controversies over the customary address in the Assembly. The DMK is now looking gingerly at the prospect of new administrative issues cropping up during the next two years of its government. The Governor, who is already sitting on bills passed in the Assembly, has been problematic for the state. The Supreme Court had to intervene to clear some of the bills from Raj Bhavan. The same trend is expected to continue.

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The central enforcement agencies have been targeting DMK ministers with searches and arrests. Another five years of the Modi government would mean that the DMK will continue to be pressurised. If INDIA bloc had come to power, not only would the DMK government have heaved a sigh of relief, it could have looked forward to some plum portfolios.

On the other hand, DMK did everything to stop the rise of the BJP. It countered every slogan and every allegation that was thrown at it by the BJP, especially its state president K Annamalai and Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. Stalin himself tried to maximise the yield of the INDIA bloc by taking over the most difficult seats from its alliance partners and putting up its candidates in those constituencies. The easier seats were left to the allies.

Coimbatore, which was won by the CPI(M) in 2019, was taken by the DMK as the BJP made a strong bid for the constituency by fielding Annamalai. When the MNM led by actor-politician Kamal Haasan had sought Coimbatore, DMK sensed that only a party with a strong organisational structure could take on the BJP candidate Annamalai. And, this has yielded dividends.

So the battle in the state is won, though not the war for Delhi.

Why BJP Failed in Tamil Nadu

The BJP on its part had fought aggressively for the opposition slot and wooed AIADMK cadres to join the BJP fold. It was looking for a seat or two, but more importantly at least 20 percent vote share in the state.

The BJP has won Lok Sabha seats in 1998 and 1999, first in alliance with the AIADMK and next year with the DMK, and also in 2014, at the head of an alliance. In 2014, the BJP won the Kanniyakumari seat.

Read : BJP’s Southern Gamble: The highs and lows of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections

The situation was similar, and yet, in this election the party's only hope was in the form of its ally PMK, whose candidate Soumya Anbumani did well in the Dharmapuri constituency. The vote share that showed at 2 pm on the counting day for the BJP was 10.53 percent.

The real fight is for the challenger’s spot between the BJP and the AIADMK. But only in a few seats the BJP has been able to come to the second spot. The AIADMK vote share showed 20.60 percent.

Annamalai was seen as a star of the BJP, on whom the party had reposed immense faith to fulfil its ambition of striking it rich in Tamil Nadu. However, he himself lost and the two Dravidian parties ensured that. His loss is symbolic of the Dravidian parties’ efforts to keep the saffron party at bay in Tamil Nadu.

AIADMK’s Strategy

The AIADMK’s prime focus was to push the BJP to the third place and quell the challenge of its former party heavyweights, O Paneerselvam and TTV Dinakaran, both of whom are in alliance with the BJP and both laying claim to the party's political legacy. Like the BJP, the party could not gain a seat in this election and its only hope was in its ally and DMDK founder late Vijayakanth 's son V Vijaya Prabhakaran who had a see-saw battle with Congress’ B Manickam Tagore in Virudhunagar.

This was an election in which the DMK was hoping to win all the seats, and it did. But the results in the rest of the country didn’t go its way. The BJP would have been happy with a second place finish, but it ended well behind the AIADMK. The DMK’s tactics paid off in T.N., but the BJP’s strategy floundered.