Declining vote share, but more seats for Left

By M. R. Venkatesh

CHENNAI, MAY 26. After 12 years, the CPI and the CPI(M) together present a healthy double-digit strength of 11 in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. But their overall vote share has marginally declined in the 2001 Assembly.

This is cause for some concern to the Left parties as, spearheading the struggle against the growth of the `communal forces' like the BJP, their slide in the vote share has come amidst two parallel developments.

Among the national parties in Tamil Nadu, the CPI and the CPI(M) have now joined the Congress losing their respective vote share compared to the 1996 Assembly poll, even as their common enemy, BJP, has surprisingly improved its voter base.

According to NIC estimates, the CPI and the CPI(M), which fought the election as part of the AIADMK-led secular front, have, despite winning five and six seats respectively, ended up with a small net loss in terms of the percentage of votes polled.

For the CPI, the vote share decline is from 2.12 per cent in the 1996 polls (when it was part of the DMK-TMC combine) to 1.55 per cent. The CPI(M) is somewhat better off, suffering only a fractional drop from 1.68 to 1.64 per cent.

On the other hand, the BJP, which both the Left parties have been consistently fighting - in fact that became the fulcrum of the secular alliance formation since 1999- has notched up a 1.18- percentage point gain. The BJP's vote share, in the company of the DMK, has gone up to 2.98 per cent from 1.81 per cent in the 1996 Assembly polls.

The BJP went alone in the last Assembly election contesting 145 seats and winning just one, but this time a strong regional ally was to its advantage, and its Assembly strength increased to 4.

For the marxists, who in 1996 contested 40 seats as part of the MDMK-led third front and won just one seat, the switch-over to a stronger regional ally, AIADMK, has been advantageous both in terms of vote share and seats won. The CPI(M) won 6 of the 8 seats allotted to it. It lost to the DMK the Tiruvarur and Tiruverambur seats.

But, rather ironically, the same alliance logic has not reaped equal benefits for the CPI. Despite being part of the same combine, it won only five of the eight seats given to it, losing two the DMK in Vedaranyam and Harbour in Chennai, and the Thally seat to the BJP. In the company of the DMK, the CPI won 8 of the 11 seats it contested in 1996.

Though the lower percentage of voting in this year's election and other local factors could have produced these varying outcomes, since the 1999 Lok Sabha polls the CPI(M) in alliance with the AIADMK has gained more than the CPI. The CPI(M) two years ago not only won the Madurai Lok Sabha seat but also picked up the Tiruvattar Assembly seat in a by- poll.

Unlike the CPI, the marxists this year were not ``weighed down'', during the seat-sharing talks, by the representation in the previous Assembly and virtually began on a fresh slate. On the other hand, The CPI, not getting its traditional seats, Tiruppur and Perundurai, dampened the spirits of the party.

Moreover, the marxist patriarch, Mr. Harkishan Singh Surjeet, establishing a direct rapport with the AIADMK supremo, Ms. Jayalalitha, and the TMC leader, Mr. G. K. Moopanar, from day one was an added advantage. For the CPI, it was its State leaders who had to do most of the talking with Ms. Jayalalitha.

But more important than these factors is, with the Left parties reversing their earlier strategy of contesting a sizable number of seats to one of fighting a smaller but more winnable number of seats the other growing regional forces like the PMK may further cut into the former's slice of the electoral cake.

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