Over 605 million voters were scheduled to vote in four stages for the 543 seats in the lower house of parliament Lok Sabha. India’s United Front government collapsed in November after Congress (I) withdrew its support over demands to sack Tamil Nadu’s DMK party which was implicated by the Jain Commission in the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Observers are not expecting the BJP to gain absolute majority in parliament in the current elections and predict a hung parliament.
The BJP-AIADMK alliance in Tamil Nadu won 30 of the 39 Lok Sabha seats while the ruling DMK-TMC coalition which won all 39 seats in the last election, managed only nine. BJP-AIADMK alliance members Y Gopalasamy’s MDMK and Ramdoss’s PMK which were routed at the last election, gained seven seats. Gopalasamy and Ramdoss have for many years remained strong supporters of the Sri Lankan Tamil cause and the LTTE. Their triumphant comeback will be viewed with concern across the Palk Strait in Colombo.