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Tamil Nadu
By Radha Venkatesan and R. Rajaram
As L. Neelamegavarnam crushed his Congress rival, A. Mahendran, by a formidable margin of 17,492 votes in the bitterly-fought February 26 poll, the ruling party recorded its fifth consecutive byelection victory in the past two years. While the AIADMK's maiden triumph in Sattankulam came as no big surprise, the victory margin did flummox the Opposition, barring the BJP, which had come together to tacitly back the Congress. As the election in the constituency, with a 24 per cent Christian population, was held within months of the AIADMK regime enacting the anti-conversion law, ignoring vociferous protests from church leaders, the beleaguered Opposition desperately hoped to stall the Jayalalithaa juggernaut. However, the Congress, despite "unofficial" backing from the main Opposition, DMK, could only end up a distant second. In fact, when votes were counted this morning at the high-security Government polytechnic centre in Tuticorin, the Congress could secure leads only in two out of the total 18 rounds — in the Christian-dominant Nazareth town in the Alwarthirunagari union and the Mudalur area. As expected, the Thevar-dominant Karungulam union, which was visibly favourable to the AIADMK and where Congress agents disappeared from several booths on February 26, gave a triumphant start to the ruling party when counting began at 8 a.m. At the end of the first round itself, Mr. Neelamegavarnam's victory became clear as he led by over 4,000 votes. By the end of the third round of counting of votes polled in booths in the Karungulam union, he had posted a handsome lead of 11,000 votes. Mr. Mahendran polled over 2000 votes more than Mr. Neelamegavarnam only during the eighth round when votes polled at Nazareth and surrounding areas were taken up. Obviously, in the face of the ruling party's munificent promises, the Congress looked a mean mendicant, just making desperate appeals to the voters to defeat the AIADMK. And its electioneering was no match to the ruling party as the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, campaigned for five days, besides a dozen Ministers and 60 MLAs, who were on the job of wooing the voters. The Opposition protested the "generous attention" of the ruling establishment on Sattankulam, but the voters had no complaints. The Congress could not even ensure that its agents sat through the polling as "several of them were bought over". Not surprisingly, the faction leaders, instead of engaging in soul-searching over the debacle, have already kick-started a campaign for the removal of the TNCC chief, S. Balakrishnan, and the working president, E.V.K.S. Elangovan.
Lesson to Opposition
In a statement, Ms. Jayalalithaa said the voters, handing a handsome victory to the AIADMK, taught a lesson to those who tried to "teach a lesson to me" through the election. Mr. Elangovan, however, attributed the AIADMK victory to "money power" and urged the Election Commission to probe it, while the DMK president, M. Karunanidhi said that it was misuse of the official machinery and huge spending which ensured the ruling party's triumph.
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