Clear mandate against Bedi-Modi combine in Puducherry
The name of former IPS officer and Puducherry Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi did not feature on the electronic voting machines in the union territory during the April 18 Lok Sabha elections. Even if she had contested, there was no way that a voter could vote specifically against her.
However, when the votes were being counted on May 23, it seemed as if the mandate was in protest against the “undemocratic manner” in which Bedi tried to run the union territory, sidelining the elected (Congress) government.
Emphatic vote against Bedi-Modi
According to local political observers, the massive victory for the Congress candidate over the BJP-backed AINRC candidate was largely an emphatic vote against the Bedi-Modi combine.
Bedi, after her flop show in the Delhi Assembly elections, losing out to Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP though Modi projected her as the chief ministerial candidate, was given a sop to rule another union territory by proxy. The aim obviously was to scuttle a non-BJP government here. V Narayanaswamy is heading the Congress government in Puducherry supported by the DMK.
Just like the Kejriwal government was not allowed to function freely, the Narayanaswamy government was torpedoed by Bedi at every twist and turn. Welfare schemes were thwarted and even routine matters were held up at the instance of the Lieutenant Governor.
It was believed that Bedi would change her ways after a recent order of the Madras High Court asking her not to interfere in the day-to-day administration, and to accord due respect to the elected government.
However, the LG has again moved the Supreme Court to impose restraint on the High Court order, with the Modi government throwing all the weight of the Union Law Ministry behind her.
Local observers say that the people of the UT are fed up with the “obstructionist” steps of Bedi and believe nothing good can happen in the union territory as long as she occupies the LG’s chair.
A vengeance
It was as if with a vengeance that the weaker sections, affected by Bedi’s spoke-in-the-wheel policy, spoke in one voice through the EVM and rendered an emphatic victory for V Vaithilingam, the Congress candidate, in the Lok Sabha polls.
Doubtlessly, fielding Vaithilingam from the UT was a good choice by the Congress, since the candidate was an incumbent Speaker of the Assembly and also a former chief minister.
Although Vaithilingam was reluctant over his Lok Sabha poll plunge, both the Congress and the DMK were surprised by the huge margin by which he won. They attributed the victory to the “anti-Modi wave” in Puducherry.
The Congress won the Lok Sabha elections, and its ally, the DMK, the Thattanchavady Assembly bypoll, defeating the AINRC, which had won both the seats in the 2014 and 2016 elections respectively on its own. This time, the BJP had ensured the support of a number of allies like the AIADMK and PMK, making it a formidable alliance.
However, the public could sense that this was an alliance propped up by Bedi and the BJP to defeat the Congress, and decided to reject it.
In 2014, AINRC candidate R Radhakrishnan had secured 35.63 per cent of the votes, while the AIADMK finished third with 18.48 per cent. Adding the votes of the BJP, PMK and DMDK, the AINRC should have bagged nearly 60 per cent. However, it secured a poor second with just 31.36 per cent.
On the other hand, the Congress, which got only 27.16 per cent in 2014, swept the poll with 56.27 per cent of the votes. Vaithilingam won by a margin of over 1.97 lakh votes; the hugeness of the margin indicating a clear repudiation of Bedi’s policies.
In the Thattanchavady bypoll too, the BJP-backed AINRC, which won the seat in 2016, lost to the Congress-supported DMK by 6.7 per cent of votes, though it should have retained the seat with a victory margin of at least 20 per cent.
‘Bedi would have initiated fresh moves to oust the Congress government’
Political observers said that Bedi would have initiated fresh moves to oust the Congress government by using NDA’s victory in Thattnchavady, as already she had nominated three BJP men as MLAs to the Assembly, though normally it was the prerogative of the ruling party to nominate them. BJP, which virtually has no presence in the UT, got a bonus of three MLAs without having to sweat for it.
The results in Puducherry has put paid to the hopes of the Bedi-Modi combine to send the Congress government packing — at least for the time being. For the moment, the combine has lost the number game.
