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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 CHENNAI 000163 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O.  12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PTER PHUM KDEM IN
SUBJECT: BHARAT BALLOT '09: MAY 28 SOUTHERN SNAPSHOTS: ELECTION 
ROUNDUP 
 
Refs:  A) 08 CHENNAI 326, B) CHENNAI 98, C) CHENNAI 100, D)CHENNAI 
¶1161. 
 
¶1. (U) This report is part of a periodic series covering items of 
interest in South India not featured in our other reporting.  This 
edition of "Southern Snapshots" covers: 
 
-- Tamil Nadu:  Parties unable to leverage the plight of Sri Lanka's 
Tamils for political gain 
-- Andhra Pradesh:  Sops trump TVs 
-- Karnataka:  BJP bucks national trend and strengthens its foothold 
in South India 
--Kerala:  Communists routed 
 
Tamil parties bet on Sri Lanka and lose 
-------------------- 
 
¶2. (U) Some small-but-noteworthy parties in Tamil Nadu overestimated 
the willingness of the electorate to abandon Congress in favor of 
any party that rallied publicly and loudly to the cause of Sri 
Lanka's ethnic Tamils, with Congress and its allies in the state 
(the DMK and VCK) winning 28 of the state's 39 seats.  S. Ramadoss's 
PMK (part of Congress's national alliance until departing in April 
to ally with the DMK's main opponent) is especially strong in 
northern Tamil Nadu and has demonstrated a particular skill at 
aligning with winning parties in the state.  It also hoped to 
capitalize on the anticipated sentiments of a public angry at the 
plight of ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka and the unwillingness of the 
Congress-and-DMK GoI to press harder for an end to the fighting.  In 
the event, however, the PMK failed to win any of the seven 
constituencies it contested. 
 
¶3. (U) The MDMK, a party with links to the Liberation Tigers of 
Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and whose raison d'etre revolves around 
supporting the Sri Lankan Tamils' cause, did win one of the four 
seats it contested.  The party's obstreperous and oft-arrested 
leader Vaiko, however, failed to win in his hometown, losing to a 
first-time Congress Party candidate, Manicka Tagore. 
 
¶4. (SBU) The Sri Lankan issue did seem to have traction in at least 
one race, however.  Union Home Minister Chidambaram (Congress Party) 
squeaked out a victory in the last hour of vote-counting by a mere 
3354 votes.  His main opponent (from the DMK's arch-rival AIADMK) 
was leading all day in the counting and at the end of the 
penultimate round, Chidambaram and his team apparently stormed 
angrily out of the room where the counting was taking place. 
Supporters of his AIADMK opponent took this as an admission of 
defeat and began celebrating the apparent victory by lighting off 
firecrackers while TV channels called the election in AIADMK's 
favor.  Dramatically, however, Chidambaram's tally surged ahead in 
the final round and he was elected after the last count, much to the 
consternation of Chidambaram's opponents, some of whom alleged 
fraud. 
 
¶5. (SBU) Chidambaram's son (and campaign manager), Karti, told us 
that Tamil groups supportive of the LTTE had targeted all the top 
candidates of the Congress party, including Chidambaram, intensively 
campaigning in traditional Congress constituencies.  He admitted 
that these efforts had hurt Congress's candidates, reducing their 
margins of victory, particularly in rural areas, where the pro-LTTE 
campaign enjoyed more popularity.  Nonetheless, the young politico 
was elated after the victory:  "I told my father that we have won 
the most difficult election," he said, "and we can win any future 
one." 
 
Congress subsidies trump TV sets in AP 
----------------------- 
 
¶6. (U) The Congress Party steamrolled its way through Andhra 
Pradesh, winning both the national- and state-level elections, which 
were held concurrently.  Congress won 33 of AP's 42 parliamentary 
seats (up from 29 in 2004) and 155 of its 294 state legislative 
assembly seats (down from 185 in 2004).  The state-level victory 
makes Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy (or YSR, as he is 
commonly known) the only Congress Chief Minister in the state since 
1982 to be re-elected for a second consecutive term. 
 
 
CHENNAI 00000163  002 OF 003 
 
 
¶7. (U) Chandrababu Naidu, head of Congress's main challenger, the 
TDP, had promised free color television sets for voters and a cash 
transfer scheme of INR 2000 (USD 40) per month to each poor 
household.  Voters were unimpressed, however, preferring the 
incumbent Congress party and YSR's record of sops, handouts, and 
big-spending projects like free electricity to farmers, mammoth 
irrigation projects, healthcare facilities and housing for the poor, 
fee reimbursement for poor students, and reservations (quotas in 
civil service jobs and university slots, for example) for 
disadvantaged Muslims. 
 
¶8. (U) Star power also failed to generate much heat among Andhra's 
voters.  Telugu-language film star Chiranjeevi and his Praja Rajyam 
Party (PRP), waging their first election campaign, managed to win 
only 18 seats in the state's legislative assembly and no seats in 
the Lok Sabha.  Given the massive publicity surrounding his 
political debut, this disappointing performance (his party received 
only 17 percent of the vote -- high for a normal first-timer, but 
far below expectations) was a flop. 
 
Karnataka BJP bucks national trends and strengthens its foothold in 
South India 
---------------------------- 
 
¶9. (U) The BJP strengthened its South India political base in 
Karnataka, winning 19 of the state's 28 Lok Sabha seats, one more 
than in the 2004 elections.  As expected, the party did particularly 
well in the northern and central districts (ref D).  The only 
surprise was the BJP's strong showing in Bangalore and coastal 
Karnataka, where some had predicted that attacks in the area by 
extremist Hindu groups on churches and pub-goers (refs A-C) might 
hamper the party's electoral prospects.  Instead, the region tilted 
heavily towards the BJP, which took all four coastal districts and 
all three of Bangalore's urban constituencies. 
 
¶10. (U) Perhaps more impressive than BJP's one-seat increase are the 
gains the party made in the popular vote, winning 41 percent, up 
from 34 percent in 2004 (and up from the 34 percent of the popular 
vote it received in the state assembly elections in May 2008). 
Bucking the national trend, the BJP's unabashed pro-Hindu tendencies 
reaped electoral dividends throughout the state.  In the Dakshin 
Kannada district (containing the city of Mangalore, which witnessed 
episodic outbreaks of Hindu extremist violence in the past year), 
for example, BJP rookie Nalin Kumar Kateel defeated Congress veteran 
Janardhana Poojary by 40,000 votes (or about five percent of the 
votes cast).  In Bangalore, South India's most cosmopolitan city, 
the BJP's candidates handily took all three of the urban districts 
by margins of approximately four to six percent of votes cast. 
 
¶11. (U) The Congress Party managed to increase its share of the 
popular vote to 38 percent, up from 36 percent in 2004, but won only 
six seats, down from eight in the previous elections.  The regional 
Janata Dal-Secular (JDS) took the state's other three seats 
(including one for former Prime Minister H.D. Devegowda), but saw 
its share of the popular vote decline from 20 percent in 2004 to 13 
percent this time. 
 
Kerala's Communists routed 
--------------------- 
 
¶12. (U) Kerala's voters maintained their typical pattern of throwing 
out incumbents, handing the Communists a major setback in the state. 
 In the previous Lok Sabha election in 2004, the Communist-led Left 
Front won 18 of the state's 20 seats.  This time, it mustered only 4 
seats, while Congress and its allies took 16. 
 
¶13. (U) In a much-anticipated race in the state's capital of 
Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), former UN Under-Secretary General 
Shashi Tharoor, a debutant in electoral politics who contested as a 
Congress candidate, won impressively, apparently surprising even 
himself.   On counting day, Tharoor told the press that he expected 
to eke out a narrow victory, but he went on to win nearly 100,000 
more votes more than his nearest rival, beating him by nearly six 
percent of the votes cast. 
 
¶14. (U) Tharoor's high-profile candidacy had attracted much national 
attention, as Leftist parties mounted a vigorous campaign against 
 
CHENNAI 00000163  003 OF 003 
 
 
him, castigating him as an "American agent" and a "Zionist" for 
alleged pro-Israel sentiments in his writings.  Tharoor, who was 
thrust into the fray by the Congress Party's leadership, also faced 
disgruntled local Congress workers in Thiruvananthapuram who 
initially resisted his carpet-bagging candidacy (he was born in 
London and lived almost all of his life outside of India, although 
his family's roots are in Kerala).  Tharoor's limited local language 
capability was yet another handicap, but he managed to overcome this 
disability with a spirited campaign. 
 
KAPLAN