It's Jaya all the way in Tamil Nadu

In an astounding comeback for AIADMK supremo Jayalalitha Jayaram, the front led by her on Friday captured a historic three-fourths majority in the 2011 Tamil Nadu assembly elections, inflicting a shatterring blow to its principal rival, the DMK-Congress alliance.

Out of the 223 seats declared, the AIADMK-led alliance won 196 seats. Of them, the AIADMK on its won bagged 146 seats, a comfortable majority to be able to form the next government on its own. The AIADMK poll tally in 2006 was 61 seats. The DMK, contesting 119 seats, managed to win only in 27 seats so far, while the Congress had a humiliating tally of just five seats out of the 63 it contested.

These were huge drops as the DMK had 100 members in the outgoing Assembly and the Congress boasted of 34 MLAs. The PMK’s performance was no better, taking only two of the 30 seats it ran for even as the Dalit outfit VCK drew a blank.

The DMK’s another ally, Kongu Nadu Munnetra Kazhagam in the western belt, is yet to win a seat. While the AIADMK’s key ally, the DMDK led by actor-politician Vijayakant, has pulled off an amazing 20-plus seats so far of the 41 it had contested, the CPM and CPI have won ten and nine seats respectively.

After three successive general election defeats—2004 Lok Sabha, 2006 Assembly and 2009 Lok Sabha elections— amid results still trickling in, Jayalalitha has emerged triumphant with a massive victory n ten years since the AIADMK last formed the government in the State in 2001.

In one of the worst electoral routs for the DMK since the 991 assembly polls after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, the party lost several of its stalwarts, including senior-most leader and Finance Minister K Anbazhagan. He lost to AIADMK’s J C T Prabhakaran in Villivakkam. Several ministers, including Agriculture Minister Veerapandi’ S Arumugam (Sankagiri), Suresh Rajan (Kanniyakumari), K P P Samy (Tiruvottiyur), T M Anbarasan (Pallavaram) and Assembly peaker R Avudaiyappan (Ambasamudram) were among the big losers. Another shocking defeat was that of the former AIADMK Minister S
Muthusamy, who recently joined the DMK, at Erode.

However, the silver lining was DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s re-election for a record 12th time
to the Assembly fromThiruvarur this time, with one of the biggest margins, defeating his nearest AIADMK rival Kudavasal M Rajendran by 0,249 votes. Other biggies who retained their seats are veteran PWD Minister Durai Murugan and T h a n g a m Thennarasu. 

Several of er former Cabinet colleagues, including O Pannerselvam, Nainar Nagendran, D Jayakumar, K A Sengottaiyan and Pollachi Jayaraman have all won with good margins. Actor Sarath Kumar, contesting on AIADMK symbol, won the Tenkasi seat. For the DMDK, its leader Vijayakant convincingly beat his nearest Congress rival Sivaraj at Rishivandiyam by a margin of 30,795 votes.

The party’s presidium chairman Panruti S amachandran won the Alandur seat. Having made this an epic battle, which in the campaign she termed a “second freedom struggle” to free Tamil Nadu from the “massive corruption and family rule of the DMK,” Amma was at last vindicated on Friday as party cadres and well-wishers virtually stormed her Poes Garden residence.

As the trends looked unassailable and irreversible for the DMK, M Karunanidhi later in the afternoon sent in his resignation to Governor S S Barnala. A terse communiqué from Raj Bhavan said the “governor has accepted the resignation of Dr M Karunanidhi and his council of ministers from the afternoon of May 13, 2011.” However, the governor has requested him nd the council of ministers to function until alternate arrangements are made,” the Raj Bhavan added.