A conflict between honouring promises made to allies during seat allocation talks and upholding grassroots democracy came to the fore recently in Tamil Nadu following the indirect election of civic chiefs in urban local bodies. In many municipalities and town panchayats, where the posts of chairperson or deputy chairperson were allocated to the allies, contestants from the DMK’s local units entered the fray and defeated the official alliance candidates with the support of a majority of the elected councillors. Amid protests from alliance party leaders, DMK president and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin directed all such elected civic chiefs of his party to resign from their posts. He suspended district unit leaders including the Cuddalore MLA from the party for having acted against the official candidates of the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance. Eventually, a section of the elected civic chiefs resigned to accommodate the allies, while some defied Mr. Stalin’s diktat. He refused to meet rebels who sought an audience to explain their positions/ the ground situation and removed some party functionaries from key positions.
Such violations are not new. In 2006, DMK rebels ousted candidates of the PMK, then an ally, in indirect elections in many places. The DMK under M. Karunanidhi was then heading a minority government with external support from the allies. PMK leader S. Ramadoss declared then that his party would only extend “issue-based” support to the DMK. However, Karunanidhi, who still had a near full five-year term to complete, largely did not go beyond censuring his party functionaries and sought to pass off the breach of agreement as an “aberration” at the local level.
In contrast, Mr. Stalin, despite heading a majority government and being firmly in command of the alliance, came across as someone who did not want his smaller allies to feel the slightest discomfort and who wanted to present himself as a ‘supreme leader’ within the DMK. In doing so, he inadvertently triggered a debate on the righteousness of his action in a democracy where the choice of the majority prevails.
