EDITS | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Congress helped by vote-splitters
A Surya Prakash
Apart from massive media support and increased vote share in some States like Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, one factor that clearly tilted the scales in favour of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election was the presence of three fledgling regional parties in the electoral arena in three States.
An analysis of the results of the Lok Sabha poll shows that between them, the three parties — Telugu actor Chiranjeevi’s Prajarajyam Party in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil actor Vijay Kant’s Desiya Murkoppu Dravida Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and Mr Raj Thackeray’s Maharastra Navnirman Sena — helped split the anti-UPA vote and enabled the Congress and its allies mop up at least 50 seats that just did not belong to them.
While it is true that the UPA would have certainly been ahead of the rival BJP-led National Democratic Alliance even without the help of these spoilers, there can be no doubt that the ruling coalition’s eventual triumph would have been far less spectacular than it seemed on May 16 if these vote-splitters were not around. In other words, as in 2004, some fortuitous circumstances enabled the Congress-led alliance to get well ahead of the NDA.
In 2004, the NDA was knocked out because of three reasons. The BJP lost 45 of its own seats, suffering huge losses in States like Uttar Pradesh, and its numbers in the Lok Sabha fell from 182 to 137; the NDA took a bit hit in Tamil Nadu when Ms J Jayalalithaa drew a blank; and the Telugu Desam, with which the NDA had an electoral understanding, got nearly wiped out in Andhra Pradesh. The prime beneficiary in both the southern States was the Congress and the UPA.
In 2009, the two southern States and Maharastra have come to the aid of the Congress. The launch of three regional outfits in these States in the run-up to the Lok Sabha poll proved advantageous for the Congress and its allies. A look at constituency-wise results in Andhra Pradesh shows that it was Praja Rajyam Party that cooked Mr Chandra Babu Naidu’s goose. This is the worst-hit State for the non-Congress formations, be it the NDA or the ‘Third Front’.
The Congress got a whopping 33 of the 42 seats in Andhra Pradesh but election data show that the PRP wrecked the chances of the TDP alliance in as many as 31 constituencies. The Congress secured a clear majority in only one constituency, Kadapa, where the Chief Minister’s son Mr YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, got 53 per cent of the votes polled. In most of the other constituencies, Congress candidates secured 40 per cent of the votes or less. However, the presence of the PRP helped the Congress sail through.
In these constituencies, the vote share of the TDP-led alliance fell to around 30-35 per cent because the PRP sliced away 18-20 per cent. At the end of the day, the PRP did not win a single Lok Sabha seat but it ruined Mr Naidu’s chances of staging an honourable come back. Though there is some variation to this theme in the State Assembly election which was held simultaneously, there is no running away from the fact that the division of the anti-Congress vote by the PRP enabled the Congress to bag an unbelievable 33 seats.
In the final analysis, the fledgling PRP took away 6.59 million votes (15.67 per cent). The TDP’s vote share was 10.48 million (24.93 per cent) and that of its alliance was 13.50 million (33.5 per cent). The Congress, on the other hand, secured 16.37 million votes (38.95 per cent). This means that the Congress was precariously perched in this State and would have taken a major hit if the PRP had not played the spoiler for the Opposition alliance.
This is surprising because Mr YS Rajasekhara Reddy’s Government had ensured excellent delivery of social sector schemes, including emergency medical assistance, health insurance and pensions for senior citizens and other deserving persons in families below the poverty line. Also, there was no visible anti-incumbency sentiment in the State prior to the poll.
Tamil Nadu is yet another state where a spoiler has come to the UPA’s rescue. An analysis of constituency-wise data shows that of the 39 constituencies in this State, the presence of Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam of film-star Vijay Kant enabled the UPA to win at least 10 seats. In the absence of DMDK, the UPA could have ended up with just 18 seats in this Sate as against the 28 that it managed to win.
The DMDK, like the PRP, did not get a single seat, but it polled over three million votes (10.11 per cent) and this hurt the alliance led by Ms Jayalalithaa’s party. In this State, the DMK’s victory was devoid of ambiguity in just four constituencies — Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, Thanjavur and Madurai — where it bagged over 50 per cent of the votes polled. The fate of many Congress candidates, including Mr P Chidambaram, could have been different if the DMDK had not been on the scene. The Union Home Minister scraped through by a narrow margin of 3,354 votes over his AIADMK rival in Sivaganga, a constituency where the DMDK polled 60,054 (eight per cent) of the votes. There are many more such constituencies where the DMDK tilted the balance in favour of the Congress.
Maharastra is the third State where a new regional outfit came to the rescue of the Congress and the UPA. The Congress , with 17 seats, and the Nationalist Congress Party, which won another eight, between them secured 25 seats as against the 20 won by the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. The Congress-NCP alliance secured 14.38 million votes (38.89 per cent). The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance got 13.01 million votes (35.17 per cent).
The MNS, like the new players in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, drew a blank but acted as a spoiler for the anti-Congress forces. It won 1.5 million votes (4.07 per cent) and impaired the chances of the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in nine constituencies. If MNS was not around, the Congress’s tally would have been less than 10 and not 17 that it finally secured. Five of these seats are in Mumbai city.
All this only goes to show that the Congress’s victory would have been less euphoric if these vote-splitters were not around. But this certainly does not detract from the fact the Congress, with 119 million votes (28.55 per cent), is way ahead of the BJP, which secured just 78.40 million votes (18.8 per cent) and the gap between the two has now increased to over 40 million votes in a national election.
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