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South Chennai polling stations miss charisma of Karunanidhi, Jayalalithaa
South Chennai, the glamorous constituency in the state, on Thursday lost its glitz and glam on polling day because of the two brightest stars of the constituency, former chief minister M Karunanidhi and J Jayalalithaa, who put Stella Maris College on RK Salai and the Corporation School in Gopalapuram on the state’s election radar during the last three decades.
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Polling staff, who usually come fully decked up to engage the two most important persons of the state there, were left bereft of the attention their polling duty had attracted so long.
Even local party functionaries were anguished over their larger than life leaders reduced to subjects of future history. “The entire local party unit used to be on its toes when our leader had visited Stella Maris.
From Poes Garden to the polling booth, the entire road used to be filled with an army of party men to welcome the leader. It was a one-hour spectacle no cadre would miss. Now, that is just history. We don’t have such a tall leader casting vote in the city now,” rued a local AIADMK functionary.
“Waiting for Kalaignar to make the brief statement after casting his vote was an experience. Cadre used to even speculate the poll outcome based on that statement.
We miss him,” said a DMK functionary, who took comfort in incumbent party chief MK Stalin and a few others filling the void in the capital. That said, not all was lost for Stella Maris, thanks to actor Rajinikanth, another prominent inhabitant of Poes Garden who casts his vote in the college, preserving its glam quotient.
Political bigwigs like Stalin and Kanimozhi of the DMK also made their voice resonate in the suburban seat by trumpeting that the wind was in their favour.
Not very far from there, Makkal Neethi Maiam leader and actor Kamal Haasan, another star of South Chennai exercised his franchise in the Corporation School on Tiruvalluvar Salai in Alwarpet. Curiously, the constituency is also where the who’s who of Tamil tinsel world discharge their constitutional duty.
While ‘ultimate’ star Ajith queued up outside a booth in Tiruvanmiyur, his peer “Ilaya Thalapathi” Vijay gave photo ops to his fans at a polling station in Neelankarai.
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