More so in this drought-prone area at the tail-end of the southern part of the Cauvery delta in this erstwhile princely state of Pudukottai.
A trusted buddy of the late MGR and a record six-time AIADMK winner from this constituency since 1977, when that party first contested Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Su Thirunavukkarasar is back at his home base Aranthangi, sporting a Congress cap this time for the April 13 polls.
This darling of the Mukkulathor community (an OBC caste) in this belt, Thirunavukkarasar is known in every village for some help or the other he has rendered, be it a school / college admission or securing old-age pension for a woman, in this constituency of about 1.67 lakh voters. Pitted against him in a straight contest is AIADMK’s new face Rajanayagam.
Thirunavukkarasar carries the mantle of both MGR - the eternal do-gooder - and the BJP’s moderate face that Vajpayee symbolised when he was prime minister during 1999-2004.
After MGR’s death in 1987, Thirunavukkarasar stood firmly behind his leader’s protégée, J Jayalalitha in the wake of the split in the AIADMK.
But the tide soon turned against Thirunavukkarasar, as he later fell out with ‘Amma’, though in 1989 he retained Aranthangi seat as the AIADMK (Jaya faction) candidate. He soon charted his own course even winning this seat in 1991 as an Independent.
MGR’s ‘true heir’
Floating his own outfit, the MGR-ADMK in the mid-1990s, Thirunavukkarasar claimed to be MGR’s ‘true heir’. Despite a zigzag political career, he kept winning this seat.
“Aranthangi, in government lingo was punishment positing; but it started getting schools, roads, bridges, a sugar factory and water supply only after Thirunvaukkarasar got elected first in 1977 and became Deputy Speaker of the Assembly,” recall his long-time associates Gandhi and Guruvel.
Twice a minister in earlier AIADMK regimes, he was to hobnob later with Karunanidhi-headed DMK.
Thirunavukkarasar got elected to the Lok Sabha from Pudukottai in 1999 when his MGR-ADMK was part of the DMK-BJP alliance. He served in the Vajpayee regime as minister of state for shipping and later IT.
After the 2001 Assembly polls, Thirunavukkarasar boldly merged his MGR-ADMK with the BJP at a function in Delhi, arguing that the saffron party happily blended Tamils’ regional aspirations with nationalist ethos.
The BJP later made him a Rajya Sabha member from Madhya Pradesh, a post that he quit before formally joining the Congress last October.