The DMK and its allies are all set for a landmark victory in the rural body election held on October 6 and October 9 for nine newly reconstituted districts in Tamil Nadu. The counting of votes began on October 12. However, the results are yet to be officially declared by the state election commission. According to the latest numbers put out by the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission, DMK has bagged 139 District Panchayat Ward Member posts out of 153 while the ruling DMK’s opposition party AIADMK, won only two District Panchayat Ward Member posts. Meanwhile, the Congress managed to win eight posts.

Further, for the Panchayat Union Ward Member Posts, DMK secured 974 seats out of the total 1,421 followed by AIADMK with 212 seats, Congress with 33 seats and BJP with eight seats. The DMK secured 89.54% of the seats in the district council, while the AIADMK secured 1.31%. The Congress managed to secure 5.23% of all district council seats. The PMK won 47 councillor seats, followed by AMMK with four and the DMDK with one. The rest of the parties who contested including Seeman’s NTK and actor-politician Kamal Haasan's MNM could not secure a single seat.

Interestingly, the 'Third Front' or rather parties like Kamal Haasan's MNM, actor-director Seeman's NTK, TTV Dhinakaran's AMMK, S Ramadoss' PMK, and actor-turned-politician Vijayakant's DMDK fared poorly. "The drubbing by the people of these vote splitters is a clear message. Either they are part of a Dravidian movement or else they perish. Independent political parties cannot survive in Tamil Nadu and they can exist only as coalition partners of either of the major parties, the DMK or the AIADMK," political analyst and a private college professor from Chennai, Dr Uma Maheshwari told IANS.

All the parties, in the run up to the elections, had expressed high confidence in their winning prospects but the results proved otherwise. C Rajeev of Chennai think tank, Centre for Policy and Development Studies, told IANS that it "is high time leaders of these political parties including Kamal Haasan understand that unless a party has a proper electoral policy and a manifesto, people will not support them.”

(With IANS inputs)