ANALYSIS. Why so much is riding on the RK Nagar bypoll

In the normal course, it would have been just another by-election being held after the sitting MLA’s demise. Coming as it does less than a year after the Assembly polls in which the ruling party won decisively, the by-election’s result, too, would have been a foregone conclusion.

But the by-election to the RK Nagar constituency, located in northern Chennai, is important for several reasons. It was from here that J Jayalalithaa got re-elected to the Tamil Nadu Assembly in the May 2016 polls, which also saw her party, the AIADMK, return to power for a second consecutive term at Fort St George. Within a few months, Jayalalithaa fell ill, was hospitalised, and eventually died in hospital on December 5.

Since then, Tamil Nadu politics has gone through several twists and turns, making this election an all-important one for all parties in the fray. O Panneerselvam, who was sworn in as Chief Minister shortly after Jayalalithaa’s death, stepped down – he later said he was coerced to resign – to make way for Jayalalithaa’s ‘surrogate sister’ and once-confidante, Sasikala, to assume the mantle of leadership.

Sasikala had got herself elected as the party General Secretary and wanted to become the Chief Minister too, till the Supreme Court sent her to prison for her role in a case of disproportionate assets, in which Jayalalithaa was first accused. The four-year sentence bars her from holding public office for 10 years.

Before presenting herself before jail authorities, Sasikala, who had shifted more than 120 MLAs supporting her to a resort on the outskirts of Chennai, installed her nephew, TTV Dinakaran, as the party Deputy General Secretary. Jayalalithaa had expelled Dinakaran from the AIADMK in 2012.

Sasikala also named Edappadi K Palaniswami, a minister in the Jayalalithaa Cabinet, as Chief Minister. He later won the confidence vote in the Assembly. Panneerselvam, who led the revolt against Sasikala, could not muster up the numbers in the Assembly to dislodge the government.

The April 12 by-election will see two factions of the AIADMK slug it out: one led by Sasikala, and the other by Panneerselvam. Both had filed petitions before the Election Commission seeking to be recognised as the official party, and asking for the AIADMK’s ‘Two Leaves’ symbol. In response, the Commission passed an interim order freezing the symbol, and asking the side to choose alternatives from the list of free symbols it has.

Dinakaran is the Sasikala camp’s nominee, while former minister E Madhusudanan, who won the 1991 Assembly election from RK Nagar, is the Panneerselvam faction’s candidate. The Sasikala faction is called the AIADMK (Amma) and the Panneerselvam faction, the AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma). While the former got the ‘Hat’ symbol, the latter was given the ‘Electric Pole’.

A joke doing the rounds on Whatsapp sums up the situation best: the party without a head now has the hat, and the one without power has got the electric pole.

Both factions are fighting a do-or-die battle. Dinakaran has to win the election at whatever cost to negate the perception that the AIADMK’s rank and file is against Sasikala assuming leadership of the party. For his part, Panneerselvam, a staunch Jayalalithaa loyalist, has to win to justify his rebellion and to prove that he was the chosen one.

Now, while one would expect principal opposition DMK to have it easy, the party has opted for low-profile local functionary Maruthu Ganesgh. After the fiasco in the Assembly during the vote of confidence, when the DMK attempted to disrupt the proceedings and all its members evicted, the party’s Working President MK Stalin would be only too keen to redeem his prestige and profile. On Thursday, a no-confidence motion against Assembly Speaker P Dhanapal, sponsored by the DMK, was defeated.

Also in the fray are music director Gangai Amaran, who is the BJP nominee, and Jayalalithaa’s niece Deepa Jayakumar, who has floated her own party.

Dinakaran and his supporters are pulling out all stops as there is so much at stake for them. This is not the first time that the AIADMK has faced a split and had its symbol frozen.

In the 1989 elections, held after party founder MG Ramachandran’s death in 1987, the party split into two, with one faction headed by MGR’s widow Janaki Ramachandran and the other by Jayalalithaa. The Janaki faction contested the elections on a ‘Pair of Pigeons’ symbol while the Jayalalithaa faction got the ‘Rooster’ symbol. The DMK romped home in that election, only for the government to be dismissed in two years, following allegations of break down of law and order. So, will the split in the AIADMK vote benefit the DMK in this election? Is that why it decided to field a low-profile candidate and not make this election a prestige issue.