Jaya regains her winning touch

CHENNAI: Defying electoral arithmetic, the ruling AIADMK on Monday achieved stunning victories in by-elections held to Kancheepuram and Gummidipoondi constituencies, to retain both.

The victories disproved the conventional belief that high voter turn-out in by-elections usually go against the ruling party.

In Gummidipoondi the AIADMK’s K S Vijayakumar polled 83,716 votes (56.93%) to defeat DMK nominee P.Venkatachalapathy (56,554 votes, 38.46%) by a margin of 27,162 votes.

AIADMK candidate T.Mythili won the Kancheepuram seat by a margin of 17,648 votes. She polled 87,274 votes (53.08%) against the 69,626 votes (42.35%) polled by DMK’s M.Kumar. The Dalit Panthers, which, too, had fielded candidates, failed to impress, with its nominees polling 2,926 votes in Gummidipoondi and 1,946 in Kancheepuram.

The DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) which, only a year ago, had scored impressive leads in these Assembly segments, had to bite the dust. The DMK and its allies were counting on their ‘vote share’ adding up to a comfortable win in both constituencies, and probably paid for their complacence.

On the other hand, the AIADMK, though bereft of alliance, not only wiped out its Lok Sabha election deficit, but also polled enough votes to win by impressive margins.

The AIADMK also managed to improve upon its 2001 Assembly elections victory margin of more than 24,000 votes in Gummidipoondi. But in Kancheepuram the margin, which had been nearly 23,000, has come down. The AIADMK had fought the 2001 elections in the company of Congress, CPM, CPI and PMK, which are now with the DMK.

Shortly after counting of votes began this morning, it was evident by the end of the first round of counting in Gummidipoondi, that the AIADMK was heading for a big win. However, in Kancheepuram it was the DMK which led the first two rounds. But from the third round onwards, Mythili, widow of former minister S.S. Thirunavukkarasu, whose death caused the by-election, surged ahead and never looked back.

Though the DMK and its allies had tried to project the by-elections as a referendum on the four-year AIADMK ‘‘misrule’’, the defeat left them stunned and complaining about the ‘‘play of money power’’ in the constituencies.

AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa, however, described it as a vindication of her faith that the party only needed to have the people with it, even if there was no ally.

The high intensity campaigning, carried out in the backdrop of a pro-active Election Commission cracking the whip on violations of model code of conduct, saw Jayalalithaa campaigning intensively in both the constituencies, even as a dozen state ministers along with a horde of MLAs and other leaders ‘carpet-bombed’ the constituencies.

In contrast, DMK president M Karunanidhi addressed only one meeting in each of the constituencies and left the major burden of campaigning on his party lieutenants and leaders of the constituents of the DPA.