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AIADMK-BJP row puts TMC in driver's seat

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Ironical, it may sound, but All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham general secretary J Jayalalitha's tiff with the Bharatiya Janata Party has put the rival Tamil Maanila Congress in the driver's seat in the Tamil Nadu.

Wooing the TMC is the party's ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam ally in the state, whose Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has gone to the extent of offering to quit, if only to keep the bilateral ties smooth.

Eight senior AIADMK leaders, while issuing a strongly worded statement on their tiff with the BJP, made oblique references to the TMC on Thursday.

Those who are directly or indirectly supporting the DMK may not win even one seat in the state if a Lok Sabha election is held now, AIADMK leaders, led by party presidium chief V R Nedunchezhiyan, said. The reference was obviously to the TMC.

What made equally interesting reading was the AIADMK's less-than-veiled reference to the Congress as a future ally. The party can go back to the 'tested friends from the past', which has been cleansed during the 1996 election, the AIADMK leaders said.

If 'time-tested friends' referred to the Congress, the 'cleansing' of the same was an obvious reference to the TMC, again, says an AIADMK source.

Between the two references, however, was the AIADMK's need for the parent Congress to woo the TMC into its fold, if an electoral alliance between the two parties had to make sense. If, however, the TMC does not change its anti-Jayalalitha stand, then the AIADMK would have no choice but to work for its electoral annihilation, the source says, 'reading between the lines'.

That way, adds he, "the AIADMK statement was a mixture of threat to and accommodation with the TMC, both at the same time. Either they have to join hands with the AIADMK, through the Congress, if it came to that, or be prepared for their traditional Congress votes shifting back to the parent party".

However, the indirect invitation to the TMC does not seem to reflect the AIADMK's confidence in the Congress bringing all of the traditional Congress votes back to its fold.

As coincidence would have it, the DMK too was taking the TMC ally more seriously than usual, hours before the AIADMK threw the 'veiled invitation'.

Speaking in the state assembly, Karunanidhi offered to quit as chief minister if the TMC's leader of the Opposition S Balakrishnan could prove his charge on the 'Tirunelveli lathi-charge'.

Taking off from where TMC founder G K Moopanar had said earlier outside the assembly, Balakrishnan said the police were under instructions to beat up TMC cadres who had taken up a public issue in the southern district-town last month.

Here again, Karunanidhi's offer to the TMC sounded more like a challenge. But he did understand the undercurrents of electoral possibilities -- where the TMC still held the vote base, and possibly the key to political chemistry -- that could make any future electoral alliance with the Congress work.

The DMK has been sending out veiled invitations to the Congress, and Karunanidhi was the first political leader in the country to criticise the Yashwant Sinha Budget for dropping the names of late prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi from welfare schemes of the government.

Given the evolving voting pattern in the state, the TMC still commands about 15 per cent committed votes, and the Congress, less than five. The AIADMK is still on the top with about 20 per cent, followed by the DMK with about 17 per cent. The BJP, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazagham and Pattali Makkal Kattchi average about three per cent, with the Communists together making up a little over that.

The TMC vote bank matters to both the Dravidian majors for coming closer to the finishing line, with the final decision resting on the near-35 per cent ranks of non-committed voters in the state.

It is in this background the TMC general council is meeting in Madras today, coinciding with the third anniversary of its founding day. The party is expected to take stock of the evolving situation, and guide the leadership on the future course to be adopted.

All this, when rumours of one of the TMC members of Parliament, N Dennis from Nagercoil, wanting to join the Congress, and the leadership having engraved in the cadre minds, the 'restoration of Kamaraj rule' in the state by the 2001 assembly poll.

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