| Curtain
comes down on campaign amid claim, counter-claim in TN
ENS &
Agencies
Chennai,
May 8:
The heat and dust generated during campaigning for Thursday’s
election to the Tamil Nadu Assembly and the Tiruchirapalli Lok Sabha
by-election settled down as campaigning ended at 4 pm today.
 With
electronic voting pressed into service everywhere, all the results
are expected to be announced by 2 pm on Sunday. All major players
made last-minute efforts to woo the electorate by addressing meetings
in the city. While Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi ended his hectic
campaign with a public meeting in Chepauk, Jayalalitha addressed
a meeting in north Chennai.
Union Home Minister L.K. Advani addressed a public meeting at Tirupur
in Coimbatore district, while Congress president Sonia Gandhi concluded
her campaign with a meeting in Pondicherry, which also going to
the polls. It’s now the turn of party workers — the unsung
heroes — to launch a door-to-door campaign by distributing
voter slips.
A total of 4.75 crore voters have to choose 234 MLAs from among
1,857 candidates, including 104 women. There are 11 candidates for
the Tiruchirappalli LS seat, where a by-poll was necessitated following
the the death of Union Power Minister Rangarajan Kumaramangalam
last August.
While Karunanidhi, trying his luck for the tenth time, is seeking
re-election from Chepauk, his son M.K.
Stalin, is once again contesting from Thousand Lights constituency.
AIADMK chief
and star campaigner Jayalalitha’s nominations were rejected
because of her conviction in corruption cases but that hasn’t
stopped her from dreaming of becoming chief minister.
The DMK-led NDA, the AIADMK-led secular front and Vaiko’s MDMK
are the main players this time round. Campaigning was peaceful though
marred by personal attacks on Jayalalitha by her political opponents
and on Karunanidhi by Jayalalitha and her allies.
The possibility of Jayalalitha heading the next government if her
front wins the elections became the main topic at most campaign
meetings, relegating issues on the manifesto to the background.
In his campaign speeches, Karunanidhi charged that Jayalalitha was
asking for votes by narrating her worries and sorrows instead of
listing her party’s programmes. Listing his governments’s
achievements, he sought a fresh mandate to continue development
programmes. Jayalalitha, on the other hand, charged him with hatching
a conspiracy to politically eliminate her so that his son, Stalin,
could be installed as Chief Minister of the state.
Apart from the BJP, a large number of newly-formed caste-based parties
are constituents of NDA — sans Vaiko’s MDMK which quit
the alliance in the state following differences over seat-sharing.
The secular front consists of AIADMK, Congress, TMC, PMK and a few
smaller parties.
Karunanidhi defies opinion polls
 Tamil
Nadu Chief Minister and DMK president M. Karunanidhi today said
that all opinion polls suggesting victory for the AIADMK will be
proved wrong by the election results.
Concluding his
three-week-long campaign by addressing a meeting at Chindatripet
under his constituency of Chepauk, Karunanidhi said that he was
not ‘‘disrepecting or ignoring’’ such ‘opinion
polls’. But, he added: ‘‘Opinion polls would not
prove to be correct (karuthu kanippu oru nalum palikkathu).’’
He added that
the voters have not forgotten Jayalalitha’s rule when, he said,
there had been incidents of violence against advocates R. Shanmugasundaram
and K.M. Vijayan, former chief election commissioner T.N. Seshan,
former Union minister P. Chidambaram and former IAS officer V.S.
Chandralekha. Though the law would not allow Jayalalitha’s
comeback, Karunanidhi reminded people that if they gave another
chance to her, no one would be able to check the ‘degradation’
of Tamil Nadu.
The CM said
he felt sorry for communist leaders like R. Nallakannu (CPI) and
N. Sankariah (CPM), who, for the sake of four or five seats from
Jayalalitha, had swallowed insults heaped on them by her.He said
he had been working to make the Tamils live with ‘self respect’.
His only wish was that the voters themselves understand the ‘evils’
of Jayalalitha regime.
Jaya dreams
of chief ministership
 AIADMK
general secretary J. Jayalalitha, who was barred from contesting
the Assembly elections, said people all over the state wanted her
to be the next chief minister.Concluding her campaign in the city,
she said in an informal press briefing outside her residence that
the whirlwind campaign gave her a tremendous sense of fulfillment
and satisfaction.
‘‘In villages and cities, literate and commoners alike
said with conviction that I would be the next chief minister,’’
Jayalalitha said, adding that she had nothing more to say. She said
the results would show that majority of the opinion polls which
predicted an AIADMK win were right. Asked why the leaders of the
secular front were not able to share stage, she said ‘‘circumstances’’
prevented them from speaking from the same platform. ‘‘It
does not mean we have no unity,’’ she said, adding that
only the results were important.
Asked about Vajpayee’s remarks on the secular front being a
bundle of contradictions, she said the statement was directed to
the wrong address. It was only the NDA which was a bundle of contradictions,
she said, pointing out that the PMK and Mamata had left the BJP-led
Centre and the MDMK’s position was also nebulous. ‘‘One
does not know whether the MDMK is in or out of the NDA. Vajpayee
himself is confused,’’ was her reply.
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