In four out of the seven constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes, the winning margins have exceeded 20% in the recent Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu.
Candidates in Nagapattinam, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and the Nilgiris won by a margin of over 20% while VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan had to battle it out with the AIADMK candidate in the Chidambaram Parliamentary where he could only win by 0.28%.
In contrast, in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, only the AIADMK candidate in Tiruvallur Parliamentary constituency won with a margin of more than 25%. The other winning candidates won by a margin of 15% except in Villupuram, where the AIADMK candidate won by an 18% margin.
While this trend is not peculiar to SC seats, it nevertheless points to an increased consolidation of minority and Dalit votes in Tamil Nadu against the NDA.
Multiple reasons have been cited for such high margins.
While a strong alliance and sustained criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies such as demonetisation and GST are key, VCK general secretary D. Ravikumar attributes the presence of the PMK in the AIADMK alliance for the consolidation of Dalit votes in favour of the DMK-VCK alliance.
“After AIADMK aligned with the PMK, the Dalit voters who have been loyal to AIADMK, fully migrated to the DMK alliance. The same migration happened even in the 2009 general elections. The anti-PMK sentiment among Dalits is very high. Since the Dalit, Muslim and Christian consolidation happened for the DMK alliance, the PMK has lost big in its constituencies,” he said.