MK Stalin waves to supporters at the party headquarters in Chennai on Saturday. (PTI)

Chennai, May 16: The absence of a swing from the DMK to the ADMK does not make the Tamil Nadu results an unusual one. For, the real formula in Lok Sabha elections in the state is that whichever party the Congress supports tends to win — and it held this time too.

The trend has been seen since 1977 except for 1998 and 1999, when the Congress was hopelessly divided in the state and the two Dravidian majors alternately flirted with the BJP.

In 1996, a split in the Congress and the creation of the Tamil Maanila Congress following P.V. Narasimha Rao’s unpopular decision to ally with a discredited Jayalalithaa, had led to the party’s defeat. However, it was still the Congress votes that made the difference — only they went to the TMC that had allied with the DMK.

In 2004, the DMK and the Congress came together after two decades and swept the polls. In 2009, while former Congress allies PMK, MDMK and the Left parties switched over to the ADMK’s side, the presence of the Congress in the DMK front helped M. Karunanidhi counter Jayalalithaa’s arithmetical advantage and negative campaign on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue.

One crucial factor that helped the DMK-Congress was the welfare schemes of the UPA and the DMK, which diluted anti-incumbency issues like price rise and power cuts.

“Our schemes were our biggest advertisements. We only reminded the voters that we had delivered more than what we had promised them during the 2006 elections,” local administration minister M.K. Stalin said.

The DMK-Congress front won almost 30 of the 39 seats, with the ADMK failing to gain much and the other pro-Eelam parties — the PMK and the MDMK — getting drubbed.

Jayalalithaa, once opposed to a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka, had made a U-turn before the elections and joined the Eelam bandwagon. She had accused the Congress and the DMK of “betraying the cause of Tamils” by not trying hard enough to stop the war in Sri Lanka. But the Lankan Tamil issue failed to make an impact.

But although the ties with the Congress seem to have benefited the DMK, the Congress has lost some ground, as illustrated by the defeat of ministers Mani Shankar Aiyar and E.V.K.S. Elangovan and state Congress president K.V. Thangkabaalu.

“It is wrong to assume that some of our leaders lost because of the campaign against the Congress on Sri Lanka. If that was the case, a first-timer like Manik Tagore could not have defeated MDMK leader Vaiko at Virdhunagar,” said Congress Rajya Sabha member Sudarshan Nachiyappan.

The Congress has been considerably weakened by factionalism and its inability to even hold intra-party elections and strengthen the grassroots organisation. So much so, that a new entrant — a caste-based party in the western region — ate into its votes and denied victory to two senior candidates –- Elangovan and R. Prabhu.

This is also borne out by the abandonment of the old MGR formula, under which the Congress used to contest two-thirds of the Lok Sabha seats and one-third of the Assembly seats whenever it allied with the ADMK. After 1998, it has been relegated to a junior partner even in Lok Sabha elections.