In political palette of TN, saffron is a colour DMK wants turned pallid

On June 11, the streetlights went out outside Chennai airport when Union Home Minister Amit Shah was in the ‘Detroit of Asia’ (as the Gateway to South India is nicknamed), following which Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers came out in protest, demanding a probe into the power outage. The very next day, state power minister V Senthil Balaji clarified that this was ‘accidental’. On June 14, Balaji was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) after 18 hours of interrogation and a search of his official residence and chamber at the state Secretariat.

While many see this arrest as a coincidence, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and its allies say it is part of vendetta politics. This was hardly 10 days before a meeting of 15 Opposition parties in Patna on June 23.

A month later, as DMK supremo and Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin was ready to join yet another meeting of 26 political parties in Bengaluru on July 17, which saw the formation of a new coalition named the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), yet another minister was raided and arrested. This time, Tamil Nadu Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy was taken into custody by the ED after a raid at his house and his son’s house in Viluppuram.

On July 19, another minister faced ED heat when the agency indicated its willingness to assist the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) in a disproportionate assets case against Fisheries Minister Anitha R Radhakrishnan.

These, the DMK claims, are not one-off incidents.

According to Stalin, the ED conducted 112 raids in 10 years before the BJP took power, but the same ED conducted 3,000 raids against the Opposition after the BJP took charge at the Centre, of which only 0.05 per cent of cases were proven.

The BJP contests this.

“Take the case of Balaji: it was Stalin who first made corruption charges against Balaji while he was with the All India Anna DMK (AIADMK) and Stalin was in the Opposition. The current action against the power minister was based on evidence and the observations of the Supreme Court. In Radhakrishnan’s case, too, the complaint was first filed by the DMK. How can it be considered vendetta?” asks Tamil Nadu BJP Vice-President Narayanan Thirupathy in an interaction with Business Standard.

It was indeed the DMK that first raised allegations against both leaders.

DVAC had filed a case against Radhakrishnan in 2006 when the DMK was in power. The case was that Radhakrishnan and his family had acquired disproportionate assets while he was the housing board minister during the AIADMK’s regime between 2001 and 2006. The ED had approached the court with a claim to assist DVAC, stating that it had crucial evidence related to the case.

Similarly, Balaji was transport minister in the AIADMK government led by the late J Jayalalithaa from 2011 to 2015. The allegation against him was that he sought money in exchange for jobs in various departments in his ministry. This issue was also highlighted by the DMK first. Later, both these leaders switched sides and shifted to the DMK.

“These agencies will do their duty. If you think that you are clean, face it and prove it. There is no politics involved in it,” adds Thirupathy.

BJP’s Tamizha aggression

According to political pundits, while the BJP was able to make inroads into the vote banks of regional parties and the Congress in various states, it was Stalin who stood out among them.

The DMK and its allies had won 38 of the 39 Lok Sabha (LS) seats in the state last time. This is compared to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and Nara Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, which saw a decline in their seats and vote share. Hence, the BJP is trying to improve its vote share in the state through strategies suggested by former civil servant K Annamalai, who is president of the state unit.

“Tamil Nadu has always supported the Dravidian ideology party. The BJP is trying to balance Hindutva and Dravidian ideologies in the state and stem the growth of the DMK. The challenge before the BJP in the next LS polls is how many seats it can win in Opposition-party states. That is why it is focusing on southern states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh. It wants to stabilise its party in the South,” observes R Venkatesh, a political analyst and faculty member at the University of Madras.

According to Venkatesh, it may not be easy for the saffron party to make inroads into the DMK base without reeling in another Dravidian party — in this case, the AIADMK.

Interestingly, the battle between Edappadi Karuppa Palaniswami and Ottakarathevar Panneerselvam has weakened the AIADMK in recent years, even as Stalin became successful in increasing his stature as a leader. That is one of the reasons why experts like Venkatesh believe that, in the case of a non-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, Stalin is going to play a crucial role.

Stalin’s 10-minute recorded video warning the BJP after Balaji’s arrest was also widely circulated across South India, as he has a strong fanbase in neighbouring Kerala, too.

“We, too, are capable of all sorts of politics. This is not a threat, but a warning. Do not rub a DMK man the wrong way. If we retaliate, you will not be able to tolerate it,” the DMK supremo is heard saying.

While the BJP may be projecting itself as a third force in the state, it has a long way to go.

In the 2019 LS polls, the NDA got a 30.57 per cent vote share, with the BJP getting only 3.66 per cent. This is compared to 53.15 per cent by the DMK-led alliance, with Stalin’s party winning 33.52 per cent votes. The AIADMK‘s share of the vote was 19.39 per cent and it was in the NDA. In the 2021 Assembly elections, the BJP’s vote share was 2.62 per cent, indicating it still has a lot of work to do.

Under the circumstances, can the ED be a force multiplier for the BJP? Most experts say the party has a leader. But it still needs organisation.