Chennai, May 6 (UNI) The massive and unprecedented poll swing unleashed by the nascent Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) of actor-politician Vijay not only upended the six-decade-long Dravidian duopoly and stormed to power with a bang in its maiden electoral battle, but also buried the long-held notion that the Vedasandur Assembly seat in Dindigul district is no longer the Nostradamus or political bellwether of Tamil Nadu elections, losing the tag of TN's poll crystal ball.
For long, the party which won the seat went on to form the government, a pattern that has held for the last five decades.
But the dominance of Vijay in these elections has broken this myth, or notion, as the candidate of the DMK emerged victorious, with the nominee of the TVK finishing third.
T. Saminathan of DMK won the Vedasandur assembly seat, defeating VPB Paramasivam of AIADMK by a margin of nearly 10,000 votes, and Dr N. Nakajothi of TVK finished third.
With the party whose candidate lost the particular seat is set to form the next government for the first time, the Vedasandur seat has lost the tag of TN's election crystal ball.
Since the 1971 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, the party that wins the Vedasandur seat goes on to form the government in the state, earning it a reputation as a constituency that reflects the broader electoral mood. That streak was broken in these elections.
This interesting trend, which started in 1971, continued till the previous elections, and the April 23 polls to elect the 234-member Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly proved otherwise, it is no more the political bellwether in the state mirroring the outcome of the polls.
A political bellwether area means a reliable indicator of broader electoral trends, with people voting for the winning party or candidate, acting as a microcosm of the total electorate to predict the overall result.
Nostradamus (1503-1566) was a French physician and reputed seer known for publishing Les Propheties (1555), a collection of 942 cryptic, rhymed quatrains forecasting future world events. Often cited for predicting major disasters, his name is synonymous with prophetic, mysterious, or apocalyptic predictions.
It started in 1971 when the DMK candidate P. Muthusamy won the seat and the Dravidian major went on to capture Fort St. George, the seat of power. Since then, Vedasandur has emerged as the trendsetter, returning AIADMK candidates from 1977 to 1984. In 1977, the victory of the AIADMK candidate saw MGR ascending the throne for the first time, becoming Chief Minister, and this trend continued till his death in 1987.
The subsequent elections too were no different, as the DMK returned to power in 1989, ending its 13-year-long wait, after its candidate won the seat. The victorious candidates of the DMK and AIADMK ensured they formed the government between 1991 and 2001--AIADMK in 1991, when J Jayalalithaa became Chief Minister for the first time, banking on the sympathy wave in the aftermath of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at Sriperumbudur during an election rally; DMK in 1996; and again the AIADMK in 2001.
The 2006 Assembly polls saw a deviation from this trend when the Congress candidate won the seat as an ally of the DMK, which went on to form the government despite not securing a majority on its own, with the outside support of the national party and other allies, which Opposition AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa termed a "minority" government. But an unperturbed DMK Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, who was at the helm of affairs, completed his full term successfully, before the victory of AIADMK candidates in 2011 and 2016 ensured an AIADMK regime for two successive terms.
In 2021, the first Assembly polls held in the absence of two towering leaders J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi, DMK candidate VPB Paramasivam won the polls and the DMK riding on the anti-incumbency wave returned to power after a decade with a thumping win and the party President M K Stalin became the Chief Minister for the first time.
And in this elections , the DMK, in a bid to secure a second successive term and install the Dravidian Model 2.0 government, fielded Saminathan as the party's candidate. He won the polls, but the DMK lost badly at the hustings and could not form the government, breaking the notion that Vedansandur seat is the Nostradamus of TN polls.
The former winning candidates of the DMK attributed this trend to neutral voting behaviour. The voters making decisions without any bias was the prime reason behind the outcome in Vedasandur reflecting the state's mandate for more than five decades.
They also expressed confidence that this pattern would continue in these polls too, and that the DMK would retain power and Vedasandur would send its candidate to the Legislative Assembly. But this trend was broken in this elections, proving that Vedasandur is no longer the political bellwether.
UNI GV IM AAB