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Smooth
sail for first family
in Tamil Nadu
DMK win comes
cheap at Chepauk
T. Balaji
& N.C. Bipindra
 Chennai,
May 5: It’s just another poll for 77-year old Tamil Nadu
Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi. But six decades of public life
has taught the DMK president to take every election seriously. With
virtually no contest at hand, Karunanidhi has been campaigning from
dawn to dusk.
Of the total electorate of 1,28,404 in Chepauk constituency, where
he is contesting for the second consecutive term, nearly half (60,870)
are women. Despite his hectic electioneering throughout the state,
Karunanidhi took three days to thoroughly cover his constituency.
Ever since the constituency was carved out in 1977 by taking out
some corporation divisions from Egmore, Triplicane and Thousand
Lights Assembly constituencies, Chepauk has been electing only DMK
candidates or those who contested with its support. The pro-Congress
sympathy wave inspired the only exception when DMK general secretary
K. Anbazhagan was defeated here in 1991.
Once again, the constituency has been allotted to the Congress by
the AIADMK front and it has fielded P. Damodaran, a supporter of
former TNCC president K.V. Thangabalu. Even the Congress workers
are admitting that Damodaran is a ‘‘soft’’ candidate
for Karunanidhi. But Damodaran is un deterred. ‘‘I will
create history,’’ he claimed, adding the law and order
problem would help him win.
While the MDMK has fielded its senior functionary Tamilmaravan,
a literary scholar, to fight the Chief Minister matching his ‘saucy,
juicy and punch-filled’ campaign style, the other party candidate
in the constituency is S.J. Raja of Ambedkar Puratchikara Makkal
Katchi.
The AIADMK camp believes a sizeable Muslim population will vote
for it after the DMK has joined hands with the BJP. But Suresh Kumar,
Chepauk DMK secretary says the sizable number of Sourashtra families
and Brahmins would fetch more votes to the DMK front ‘‘as
the BJP and Hindu Munnani are with the DMK."
Rising son
glints in Thousand Lights
 If
it's a cakewalk for daddy Karunanidhi, son M.K. Stalin is way ahead
of his opponents in the Thousand Lights constituency. The Chennai
Mayor kicked off his campaign in style with all the alliance partners
pitching in for him. While Stalin’s campaign managers have
draped the constituency in DMK colours and the rising sun symbols
in flags, festoons and posters, his rivals have barely managed to
set up their election offices.
The de facto number two in the ruling party hierarchy and a potential
successor of Chief Minister Karunanidhi, Stalin is quite popular
among the slum-dwellers. As the Mayor, he laid concrete roads in
slum areas and replaced the thatched huts with brick houses. Little
wonder he has created a committed vote bank and in four out 10 Corporation
wards in the constituency, slum votes can be decisive.
However, resentment seems to be brewing among the 1,500-odd voters
of Swatantra Nagar, a slum on Greames Road near Cochin House, who
have been displaced from their huts to vacant plots — sans
electricity and water supply — with promises that they would
be rehabilitated in brick dwellings.
Stalin’s main rivals are the TMC Students’ Wing president
Vidiyal Sekar and MDMK’s Malliga. Seka, a native of Erode,
is a popular leader. But the announcement of his candidature came
very late, leaving little time for effective campaigning. Exuding
confidence that he will be successful in ‘‘unseating’’
Stalin in the latter’s stronghold, Sekar’s campaign focuses
on the water crisis, the ‘‘corruption’’ at ration
shops and scarcity of basic amenities.
He will also try to cash in on the ‘‘sympathy wave’’
over Jayalalitha’s disqualification from contesting the Assembly
polls and hopes to reign in the AIADMK cadres for electioneering.
Like Chepauk, this constituency has a history of electing DMK candidates
seven times in the 10 Assembly polls since 1957. Ex-state Law Minister
K.A.K. Krishnasamy was the only successful AIADMK candidate to win
from here.
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