The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its allies looked poised for a clean sweep of all 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu, with neither the AIADMK nor the BJP leading in any constituency by Tuesday evening, according to Election Commission data. DMK stalwarts like Kanimozhi, A Raja, T R Baalu, and Dayanidhi Maran, as well as prominent Dalit leader and VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan, and senior Congress leader S Jothimani were all on track for victory. However, BJP state president and firebrand leader Annamalai, who was seen as one of the party’s strongest candidates in the state, was trailing by over 1 lakh votes to the DMK’s Ganapathy Rajkumar in Coimbatore. The DMK and allies had won 38 seats in 2019, when the AIADMK, which was in alliance with the BJP at the time, won one. On Tuesday, Chief Minister M K Stalin, who is also the president of the DMK, thanked voters, saying: “The whole state of Tamil Nadu has united to defeat (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi. The last time, we won 38 seats, and this time, we got one more and won all 39.” “INDIA alliance was formed by secular forces in the country. Thinking that they have no rivals, the BJP believed they can win 400 seats (in the Lok Sabha). But results show that BJP has become a party that can’t even form the government. The people have given them a fitting reply and that is the victory of the INDIA alliance. After we get a complete picture of the results, we will continue working towards the efforts to protect India and the Indian Constitution. I submit this victory as an offering to the late Kalaignar (former CM M Karunanidhi),” Stalin said. Asked whether he had ambitions to become the Prime Minister, he said, “I repeat what Kalaignar said many times… ‘I know my heights’.” The DMK-led alliance in Tamil Nadu has been in place since 2018, and the party’s top leadership credits Stalin with maintaining the strong bloc and leading it to victory – from the 2019 Lok Sabha election, through the 2021 Assembly and 2022 local body polls, and now the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The alliance includes the DMK, the Congress, VCK, and the Left parties, among others. The strength of the DMK alliance was often bolstered by Stalin’s accommodating political arrangements. Notable figures such as Congress leader P Chidambaram and actor-politician Kamal Haasan have been given Rajya Sabha seats under this arrangement. He has also allowed allies such as the VCK and Vaiko’s son Durai Vaiko to contest on their own symbols, prioritising alliance unity. Since the start of counting Tuesday morning, nearly all DMK candidates established early leads, painting a clear picture of the electorate’s preference before noon. The breakup of the AIADMK-BJP alliance last year, and the resilience of the vote bank of Naam Tamilar Katchi – the party of Tamil nationalist leader Seeman – caused a four-way split in the votes in many seats. Of the top DMK leaders in the fray, Maran was leading with a margin of 2.42 lakhs before the Election Commission formally declared his victory. Baalu was leading by a margin of 4.64 lakh votes, Raja by 2.40 lakh votes, and Kanimozhi by 3.90 lakh votes. VCK’s Thirumavalavan, who had won in 2019 by just around 3,200 votes, increased his lead to over 1 lakh this time. Congress’s Jothimani had a lead of 1.61 lakh, and Durai Vaiko, who made his electoral debut, secured a substantial lead of 3.11 lakh votes. The major victories announced so far included Congress candidate S Sasikanth Senthil’s win, with a margin of over 5.54 lakhs votes, in Tiruvallur, and CPI(M) man Su. Venkatesan’s in the Madurai Lok Sabha constituency by a margin of 2.09 lakh votes. The CPM’s R Satchithanantham also won with 4.43 lakh votes in Dindigul.
