At around 8 am on April 8, as Election Returning Officers across Tamil Nadu were taking up nominations for scrutiny, there was tension at the Taluk Office in Edappadi, near Salem. The reason was that a candidate belonging to actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, M. Arun Kumar, had gone missing. A local leader said the candidate had come to the Taluk Office, but went missing soon after.

Arun Kumar’s nomination was later rejected. “The candidate had only seven proposers. An unrecognised party candidate needs 10 proposers,” Returning Officer P. Natarajan told the media. The nomination of the party’s alternative candidate, A. Nithya, was also rejected for the same reason. The DMK candidate in Edappadi, C. Kasi, too, had a scare when the Returning Officer felt that the signature of the candidate did not match in one place. His nomination was accepted after some back-and-forth.

The star candidate in Edappadi is the AIADMK general secretary and former Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, who has won the constituency five times. In the 2021 election, he defeated his nearest DMK rival by a margin of over 93,000 votes. There was no TVK candidate in that election; Vijay had not launched his party then. This time, TVK cadre in Salem have alleged that Arun Kumar was kidnapped. They staged a protest and raised a police complaint, but there is a twist in the tale—Arun Kumar later called the police to say he was fine and at home.

If Arun Kumar’s candidature was important enough to get this kind of attention, it is anecdotal evidence that the TVK is doing well, not just in urban areas but in rural pockets of the State’s western belt as well. While he is the only TVK candidate whose nomination was rejected, in Gobichettipalayam, about 70 km away, former AIADMK Minister and now TVK functionary, K.A. Sengottaiyan, had no such hurdles. One of his supporters said it was strange that Arun’s nomination was rejected when TVK leaders had all been given adequate training on the nomination process. When it was pointed out that even founder Vijay’s nomination had discrepancies, the supporter countered: “Was there a problem in any other candidate’s nominations?” Another added: “Even in Thalapathy’s [Vijay’s] case, the discrepancies were allowed to be set right. Why not in Edappadi?”

While the Edappadi seat was in the news for the wrong reasons, the real battle in the western belt is between two former Ministers: V. Senthil Balaji, who is now with the DMK, and S.P. Velumani of the AIADMK. Velumani is the Coimbatore district “strongman” of the AIADMK and delivered 10 out of 10 seats in 2021. DMK president and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has made it clear that he wants to break this stranglehold, which is why he seems to have asked Senthil Balaji to move to Coimbatore South from neighbouring Karur, where he defeated AIADMK Minister M.R. Vijayabaskar last time.

Senthil Balaji is in charge of 35 constituencies in the western belt—one of the largest chunks that a DMK leader has been put in charge of. There are 57 seats in the region, including Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Salem, Erode, Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, Namakkal and the Nilgiris. “We lost a few seats in the region by about 1,500 votes, a few others by about 1000 votes plus,” Senthil Balaji said in Coimbatore. “Remember that the AIADMK and the BJP were together at that time,” he added. In his view, the major loss was only in one seat, which the party lost by over 40,000 votes.

Senthil Balaji believes he will be able to reverse the trend of the DMK losing in the western districts. “I think the DMK has a good chance in Coimbatore South, North and in Singanallur,” a local journalist said, requesting anonymity. “The DMK is weak in Ooty [Udhagamandalam], Mettupalayam, and Thondamuthur for different reasons,” he added. In Udhagamandalam, the RSS has worked well among the tribal communities to gain their confidence; in Mettupalayam, factionalism within the DMK will ensure its defeat; while Thondamuthur is Velumani’s fortress.

When Senthil Balaji was initially sent to Coimbatore, there was resistance from the district unit. They were upset that a person who had nothing to do with the western districts (Karur, where Senthil Balaji won the 2006, 2011, and 2021 elections, is considered part of the central region), and who joined the party recently (he was formerly with the AIADMK and then with T.T.V. Dhinakaran’s Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam) was being sent to “manage” the election. The former Minister spoke to party office-bearers separately to address this issue. To showcase his clout within the party, he even arranged a few busloads of cadres from different levels of the hierarchy to visit Chennai and take photographs with the top leaders. The resistance died down in a few weeks. 

For Velumani, the election is his best chance to establish himself once and for all as the No. 2 in the AIADMK. Given the existing murmurs in the party over Palaniswami’s decision to align with the BJP, a debacle in the election in other regions will strengthen Velumani’s claim to be the face of the party. There are two problems on this planned path to glory: one, Senthil Balaji, who will fight both the good fight and the bad fight to win a few seats in the west, and two, dissent within the AIADMK.

When the AIADMK’s first list of candidates was released, two names were conspicuous by their absence—party veterans and former Ministers Pollachi V. Jayaraman and Udumalai Radhakrishnan. The absence of these names came as a shock to the supporters of both leaders, who were hand-picked by former AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa to handle crucial ministries. Radhakrishnan was pulled out of his cable TV business to manage the Arasu Cable Corporation, a government Multi System Operator, to provide affordable digital cable services in the State. More importantly, Radhakrishnan’s brief was to cut to size the sprawling reach of the (DMK-aligned) Sun Network that had gained prominence in the State.

Velumani has reached out to all elements in the party, and his main task is to keep cadres united. He is aware that Senthil Balaji and the DMK’s Coimbatore MP, Ganapathi Rajkumar, who was also with the AIADMK earlier, are capable of pulling away AIADMK leaders to the DMK camp. So far, he has managed to keep the party’s local leaders together. The run-up to the election will decide if they are capable of delivering as they did in the past. 

The BJP variable

The AIADMK’s ally, the BJP, also draws its main leaders also from western Tamil Nadu—former BJP State president Annamalai; Union Minister of State L. Murugan; and MLAs Vanathi Srinivasan and C. Saraswati. The RSS has a good base in the west, and the Sangh Parivar has been active in the hills (Udhagamandalam, Valparai) and in constituencies such as Avinashi. Both Murugan and Annamalai of the BJP contested the Lok Sabha election in 2024 from this region but lost.

The BJP’s problem in the western region is the same that it faces across the State—leaders of the party not working with each other. It is an open secret that the top leaders are at loggerheads. Annamalai, who came second in the Lok Sabha election, was expected to contest the Assembly election this time. But since the AIADMK allotted only one seat to the BJP in Coimbatore and five in the entire western belt, Annamalai could not get a seat. Almost all BJP leaders, including Union Minister Piyush Goyal, have tried to explain this away with the line that Annamalai was needed for the State-wide campaign but no one in Tamil Nadu is buying it.

Meanwhile, New Delhi considers Vanathi Srinivasan the giant killer—she beat actor Kamal Haasan in 2021 from Coimbatore South. This time, however, the AIADMK did not give that seat to the BJP. Vanathi did not protest either because she would have had to stand against the DMK strongman Senthil Balaji. She shifted to Coimbatore North and has been campaigning intensively there. She has however had a medical setback, and was hospitalised on April 10. According to a hospital press note, she might require three to four days for a complete recovery. She has released a video from her hospital bed, but the BJP’s plan to ensure that she personally reaches each street now seems impossible.

While the BJP adds to the AIADMK’s strength in the west, the DMK is fighting to show that there are no longer any fortresses in the State. The loss of a few seats out of the 234 might not seem like much, but it will decide which of the two leaders—Senthil Balaji or Velumani—comes out ahead in what has become a personal battle of prestige.

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