After a review meet, Vijayakanth agrees to “reimburse” expenses of candidates who lost the polls

Captain Vijayakanth is back from shooting a film and after a few days of his ignominious performance in the assembly polls, when the chief ministerial candidate himself lost his own seat, he sat down with his party men to review what went wrong.

Of course it is all for public consumption and to play act, said one of the candidates who lost heavily by contesting on the DMDK ticket that he thought was a winning one, “if only the DMDK went with the DMK.”

Incidentally this was the sentiment expressed by many of the DMDK cadres and leaders who attended the review meeting.

Many were angry as well as sad that they lost lot of money, by fighting an election they were bound to lose. “Captain has said he will reimburse expenses to those who lost,” said one of the candidates who attended the review meeting in conversation with few media persons.

Well there have been rumors that Vaiko and Vijayakanth were indeed the B Team of AIADMK.

The sudden decision to go with Peoples Welfare Front that surely would have split the anti-incumbency votes was a decision calculated to help Amma. This was the charge against Vijayakanth by three DMDK secretaries who jumped the ship at the eleventh hour.

The results bear out this charge – that eventually the AIADMK scraped through, in many seats with wafer thin margins in a tough fight between the AIADMK and the DMK. The presence of many players – the BJP too in one front, the PWF-DMDK-TMC and Pattali Makkal Katchi – all of which bit the dust eventually did ensure a result that many were expecting – victory for AMMA.

Although the DMK tried its best, running a high voltage campaign that seemingly had rattled Jayalalithaa, but in the end it was the bit players who made a difference.

Just as the DMDK cadres and leaders cannot absolve Captian Vijayakanth of the blame, many in DMK are also angry with the leadership for caving in to Congress demands, a party that has lost its moorings in Tamil Nadu and was getting ejected from most parts of the country.

Incidentally, Tamil Nadu that banished Congress from its state, way back in 1967. Now in 2016, Tamil Nadu will not be sending even a single Congress MP, as the Congress lost deposit in all but one of the 39 seats it contested in Lok Sabha elections. And in the ensuing Rajya Sabha elections for six seats, two are for the DMK and four for the AIADMK and both parties have nominated their respective candidates.

So for the Congress leader P Chidambaram, hopes are dashed for entering the parliament via Rajya Sabha.

Some senior DMK leaders are also blaming the Congress for pulling down the alliance and in fact causing the DMK to lose a “winning election””. Though for the record, Stalin has denied that the DMK loss has nothing to do with the Congress.

In fact, it is the DMDK’s decision that swung the election Amma’s way. As it was on the day, Captain Vijayakanth announced his decision, the AIADMK erupted in celebrations. Its spokesperson CR Saraswathi, since defeated in her own seat in Chennai, had declared “now there is no stopping Amma”.