As if the troubles for Congress in Puducherry are not enough, PM Modi is set to visit the Union Territory to address a public meeting at the AFT Mill in Thidal. This will be the second visit of Prime Minister Modi to Puducherry since February 2018, when he participated in the golden jubilee celebrations of Auroville International township.
“Prime Minister is visiting the state after a gap of three years and workers of the party are very happy with his visit. It will be a historic public meeting by Modiji,” said the BJP President of Puducherry, V Saminathan. “PM Modi’s visit is a purely political one and there is no relation between his visit and the political condition of Puducherry,” he added.
Congress is already running a minority government in the state. In the 30 seats of the assembly that go for the polls, Congress won 15 in the last election while DMK won two. Both parties then came together to form the government in Puducherry.
However, in the last few weeks, Congress has lost many MLAs due to defections and resignations. Two of them — A Namassivayam and E.Theeppainthan — resigned on January 25 to join BJP. On Monday, Malladi Krishna Rao quit and on Friday, A John Kumar resigned, turning the Narayanasamy government of Puducherry into a minority government.
As of now, out of the 30 legislative assembly seats that go for elections (total 33 seats with 3 being nominated), the government, as well as the opposition, have 14 MLAs each while two seats lie vacant. Therefore, before Puducherry goes to the polls in April-May this year, Congress could lose the government because the opposition, with the same number of MLAs, would make a claim for the government.
PM Modi’s visit to Puducherry, on the other hand, could prove to be the last nail in the coffin in diminishing Congress’s presence in the UT. If even a single MLA decides to cross the banks, the Congress government would fall, and the opposition, which currently has 14 MLAs, would have the numbers to prove the majority in the floor test of the house.
The relation between DMK and Congress has turned bitter recently due to recent conflicts in seat-sharing for Tamil Nadu as well as the Puducherry assembly election for both parties.
The issues between DMK-Congress started coming out in the open when the grand old party performed badly in the 2019 general elections but won almost all the seats in Tamil Nadu, thanks to its alliance with DMK. Many DMK leaders questioned the ability of Congress to win votes and started seeing it as baggage.
Previously Senior DMK leader S Jagathrakshakan said that the party will contest on all 30 assembly seats of Puducherry assembly alone and added, “If we fail (to win polls), I will commit suicide on this stage.”
If the DMK decides to pull out the support, the Congress-DMK government of Puducherry would fall months before the election (expected to be held by May this year) and V Narayanasamy will have to resign from the CM chair.
The leaders of the regional parties do not want to ally with Congress because the central leadership of the party cannot fetch votes like BJP, which single-handedly turned the results of the Bihar Assembly Elections of 2020. While on one hand, PM Modi could turn even the most unlikely elections on the other, Rahul Gandhi’s visit to any state further puts the position of the party in doubts.
