Members of the Scheduled Caste communities, who would have otherwise backed the AIADMK, may predominantly favour the DMK this time.
| Photo Credit: File photo
With the principal Opposition party, AIADMK, staying out of the fray in the Vikravandi by-election, the talk doing the rounds in the party and elsewhere is which way the party’s votes will go.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the party polled 65,365 votes in the Vikravandi Assembly segment of the Villupuram constituency. Though this was about 18,800 votes lower than what it had polled in the 2021 Assembly election, the drop could be attributed to the fact that the party had only one ally: the DMDK. Three years ago, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), which has a considerable base, and the Bharatiya Janata Party were the AIADMK’s allies. In the recent election, the PMK, as part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), polled around 32,200 votes in Vikravandi.
In the by-election, in addition to the DMK, the PMK and the Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) have put up their nominees.
Political observers in northern districts agree on one thing: the hardcore members and supporters of the AIADMK will not vote for the DMK and most of them may not vote at all. At the same time, the caste factor will play a role, they point out. While members of the Scheduled Castes (SCs), who would have otherwise backed the AIADMK, may predominantly favour the DMK this time, and nearly one-fifths of them may vote for the PMK.
The observers feel that the NTK, which made a conciliatory gesture to the AIADMK by sending its nominee to the fast observed by Leader of Opposition Edappadi K. Palaniswami last week in Chennai, may not stand to gain much. The party, which secured 3,167 votes during the 2019 Lok Sabha election, polled 8,352 votes five years later. Unless it attracts a substantial number of the AIADMK votes, the NTK’s performance is not expected to be hugely different, the observers add.
