Vellore Election: Narrow Win for DMK. Did Minority Votes Swing it?

DMK’s Kathir Anand won #VelloreElection by 8141 votes. He got a lead of over 20,000 in Muslim-dominated Vaniyambadi

MK Stalin actively campaigned for Kathir Anand in the Vellore Bypoll

MK Stalin Facebook Page

DMK candidate DM Kathir Anand has won the by-election to the Vellore Lok Sabha constituency, defeating his AIADMK rival AC Shanmugam by a narrow margin of 8141 votes.

Vellore did not vote with the other 38 seats in Tamil Nadu in April, after the Election Commission cancelled polling following the seizure of a huge amount of cash in the run-up to the election.

Polling finally took place on Monday 5 August. The counting for the seat on Friday 9 August, turned out to be a nail-biting affair with the DMK and AIADMK taking the lead at different points of time. However, in the end DMK’s Kathir Anand emerged victorious by just 0.8 percent votes. The only ‘alternative’ party in the fray was Seeman’s NTK, which secured 2.6 percent votes.

Anand is the son of veteran DMK leader and nine-time MLA Duraimurugan, who was also a close confidante of late DMK patriarch K Karunanidhi. Shanmugam, the founder of the New Justice Party, has been part of the BJP in the past and contested this election under the AIADMK’s symbol.

The DMK-led alliance had swept 38 out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year and was expected to win Vellore as well. But the contest proved to be closer than expected.

AIADMK Gains Due to PMK, Absence of AMMK

Three factors helped the ruling AIADMK put up a good fight:

• The decision of TTV Dinakaran’s AMMK not to put up a candidate, which prevented a split of traditional AIADMK votes. The AIADMK’s splinter group had secured over 5 percent votes across Tamil Nadu in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which harmed the AIADMK’s chances in a number of seats
• The effective transfer of votes from the PMK to the AIADMK. The PMK, which is dominated by the Vanniyar community, has a committed support of 6-8 percent in Vellore seat.
• BJP leaders remained absent from the campaign. So the disadvantage the AIADMK suffered due to its national ally’s unpopularity in Tamil Nadu, wasn’t as much of a factor as it was during the Lok Sabha polls.

Having said that, there has been an erosion in the AIADMK alliance’s vote share. If one combines the votes secured by AIADMK, PMK, DMDK and BJP in all the six Assembly segments in Vellore in the 2016 Vidhan Sabha polls, it comes to close to 53 percent of the total votes cast compared to just 32.2 percent of the DMK, Congress and Indian Union Muslim League. Since then, the AIADMK has lost ground.

The results reveal a fall of around seven percentage points for the AIADMK and its partners and a rise of over 17 percentage points for the DMK-led alliance. This is a significant boost for DMK chief MK Stalin, who campaigned actively in the seat.

Minority Votes Swing it for DMK

The DMK appears to have benefitted from the consolidation of minority votes in its favour. In the Vellore Lok Sabha seat, Muslims are said to account 12-15 percent of the electorate while Christians are said to account for close to 3 percent.

The DMK got a decisive lead in Muslim dominated segments like Vaniyambadi and Ambur. In Vaniyambadi for instance, Kathir Anand’s lead over AIADMK’s Shanmugam was over 20,000 votes.

In the past few elections, the Muslims of Vellore have alternated between the DMK-IUML alliance and the AIADMK. This time, it seems that the AIADMK’s alliance with the BJP has partly contributed to the shift of Muslim votes to the DMK.

The AIADMK had tried to win back Muslim support by nominated party leader Mohammadjan, a Muslim from Vellore, to the Rajya Sabha last month. But this doesn’t seem to have helped much.

On the other hand, the DMK also gained due to the support of the All India Majlis-e-Itthadul Muslimeen. In early July, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi had come to Vaniyambadi and met DMK leader Duraimurugan, who sought support for his son in the Lok Sabha bypoll.

Owaisi addressed a public meeting in Vaniyambadi in which he urged voters to defeat the AIADMK-BJP alliance and praised the DMK for keeping them at bay, in effect campaigning for Kathir Anand.

Was Article 370 A Factor?

The polling in Vellore took place on the same day when Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced the government’s decision to scrap special status for Jammu and Kashmir - Monday 5 August. According to reports, the seat witnessed a spike in polling percentage after the proposal was introduced in the Rajya Sabha.

Perhaps the highest increase took place in Muslim-dominated Vaniyambadi. According to reports, barely 16 percent voters had voted by 1 pm on polling day but this increased by 56 percentage points in the next four hours.

A report quotes a local DMK functionary who attributed this spike to the increase in Muslim support after the Modi government’s move on Article 370.

However, some inputs from the ground also said that the late spike in polling is not uncommon and that the Muslim support for the DMK is largely due to the AIADMK’s alliance with the BJP and the strong stand taken by the DMK against communalism and on issues like Triple Talaq. The AIADMK, too, abstained during the vote on the Triple Talaq Bill, supposedly to prevent losing Muslim votes. But it seems that the community overwhelmingly chose the DMK in this election.

This is an important win for DMK president MK Stalin in the run-up to the Assembly elections two years from now. The DMK’s tally in the Lok Sabha now goes up to 24. However, the close fight given by the AIADMK shows that the party isn’t quite down and out.