Two Tamil Nadu bypolls, one political paradox: Why Left is taking on Vijay

The Left in Tamil Nadu has arrived at a political position that may be perfectly intelligible in a committee room but considerably harder to explain at a tea shop.

Though the CPI and CPI(M) continue to support Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay’s TVK government from outside, they have decided to contest the October 6 by-elections in Madurantakam (Chengalpattu district) and Dharapuram (Tiruppur district) on their own. The CPI will contest Dharapuram and the CPI(M) will contest Madurantakam and their candidates are set to be announced on Tuesday.

The official explanation is tidy. The Left is neither a part of the TVK-led alliance, nor a member of the DMK-led front, nor the AIADMK-BJP combine. “The Left parties are not in any of the three fronts. As a political party, we have to face this election,” CPI(M) state secretary P Shanmugam said on Sunday.

However, not all are in agreement. “Imagine that we are contesting and winning both seats; whom do we support then? The same TVK. Then why should we stand alone? Why don’t we support the TVK candidates? Why this complicated, not-explainable-to-common-man decision?” a senior CPI leader said, questioning a “wasteful electoral exercise”.

This is a question that illustrates the peculiar condition the Left has been in since the Assembly elections earlier this year. The CPI and the CPI(M) extended outside support to the TVK to enable Vijay to form the government, saying the move was necessary to respect the verdict, avoid Governor’s rule, and prevent what they described as indirect BJP rule. They stayed out of the Cabinet and later stayed out of the TVK’s formal alliance.

Now they will campaign against the ruling party’s candidates while continuing to protect its government. Shanmugam insisted there was no contradiction. “Our support from outside to the TVK government will continue,” he said. “Because we have taken this political position, there is no danger whatsoever to the government.”

The bypolls, he said, are “neither a general election nor an election for a change of government”. Though the distinction is constitutionally sound, it is politically delicate. Elections, after all, are where parties usually ask voters to choose who should win. Here, the Left will ask voters to defeat two candidates belonging to a government it wants to remain in office.

For some in the Left, the exercise risks becoming not merely difficult to explain but measurable in an uncomfortable way. “If two lakh votes are polled and we get only 1,000-2,000 votes, it means we become a 1% party,” a CPI(M) leader said, describing the danger of exposing the Left’s actual electoral strength in a standalone contest.

That fear gives these bypolls a significance beyond two seats. For years, the Left’s vote share in Tamil Nadu has been absorbed into the broader alliance arithmetic. A separate contest removes that shelter and turns ideological presence into arithmetic. And arithmetic can be cruelly literal.

Shanmugam offered a different case for contesting. The four Left MLAs, he said, had used the Assembly effectively to raise people’s issues and two more would strengthen that voice. The campaign, he said, would also showcase the Left’s disagreements with the TVK government over its first 120 days, including what he called liberal and neoliberal economic policies, the functioning of the Assembly, and the government’s emphasis on foreign investment.

He said the Assembly should be a forum for people’s issues, “not a lavani kacheri” — a theatrical back-and-forth. The Left has also targeted the origins of the bypolls. The TVK’s candidates, K Maragatham Kumaravel in Madurantakam and P Sathyabama in Dharapuram, were elected on AIADMK tickets in the Assembly election, resigned soon after to join the ruling party. Shanmugam labelled the move “very, very bad” and said the possibility of horse-trading could not be ruled out.

Contours of the bypoll contest

The TVK has fielded both leaders again. A top party leader said Vijay had promised both Kumaravel and Sathyabama that he would campaign in their constituencies for at least a day each.

The contest is therefore becoming crowded. The Left’s entry makes it five-cornered: the TVK, the DMK, the AIADMK-BJP combine, the Left, and the Naam Tamilar Katchi.

The broader alliance map has also changed sharply since the Assembly election. The DMK, which for more than half a decade had operated at the centre of a large coalition, is now left with the DMDK and smaller Muslim outfits after most of its former allies moved towards Vijay. The Congress, the VCK, the IUML, and the MDMK are now part of TVK’s post-poll alliance. The CPI and CPI(M), while remaining outside it, support the TVK government. The AIADMK, meanwhile, has the BJP and the PMK with it.

For the Left, the argument is that independence itself has political value. CPI state secretary M Veerapandian said the parties had already decided not to be part of any alliance and wanted to take their ideas directly to voters. He said students and youngsters were politically conscious and that the Left believed it had a place among them.

For the cadre, this leaves an unusual campaign script: the TVK should govern, the TVK should lose these two seats, and defeating the TVK in these seats should not be understood as opposition to the government. That may yet prove explainable.