Curtains down in Dharapuram and Madurantakam: bypoll silence falls, cash-for-votes shadow remains

DHARAPURAM: The loudspeakers fell silent at 6 pm on Sunday, ending campaigning for the October 6 bypolls in the reserved Scheduled Caste constituencies of Dharapuram and Madurantakam. The final day belonged to the ruling party's spectacle: Chief Minister Joseph C. Vijay led a roadshow of nearly 40 kilometres from Dharapuram to Mulanur, travelling by campaign van through Periyar statue junction, Five Roads, Meenakshipuram, Kulathupalayam and Karaiyur after a helicopter hop from Coimbatore to a Maruthi Nagar helipad. The roadshow was pure theatre. The election it closes is, in large part, a ruling-party production. Both seats fell vacant because sitting AIADMK legislators — K. Maragatham Kumaravel in Madurantakam and P. Sathyabama in Dharapuram — resigned their mandates and joined Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. The TVK poached the MLAs, triggered the bypolls, and now asks voters to bless the arrangement with their ballots. Sathyabama, having quit one party for another, stands for re-election from the very seat she abandoned. Twenty-two candidates are in the fray in Dharapuram alone, in five-cornered contests involving the TVK, the DMK (Sukanya in Dharapuram, I. Paranthamen in Madurantakam), the AIADMK, the Naam Tamilar Katchi and the Communist Party. A TVK sweep would take the party to 109 seats in the 234-member Assembly. But the arithmetic the government would rather not discuss is the allegation that the inducement machinery was not confined to poaching legislators. AIADMK MP I.S. Inbadurai has petitioned the Election Commission — writing to the Chief Election Commissioner and the state poll chief — seeking an urgent probe into alleged TVK cash distribution around Rettipalayam and Acharapakkam in Madurantakam, based on media reports from September 22. In Dharapuram, NTK candidate Karthika alleged that TVK workers handed voters tiffin boxes along with Rs 6,000 in cash, silver coins and a so-called "Victory Cup"; she said she carries photographs on her phone and that the returning officer did not act. Those complaints remain unresolved as the campaign shuts down. History is unkind to such silences. Ruling parties in Tamil Nadu have traditionally swept bypolls, and the TVK's managers know it — the roadshow was designed to convert a test into a coronation. But reserved-constituency voters were owed a verdict on governance, not a parade. Polling is on Tuesday; counting on October 9. The cameras have moved on; the Election Commission's unanswered petitions have not.