Chennai is shell shocked. It may take a decade and more, to quote one prominent civic activist in the city, for people to recover their confidence in electoral democracy and return to the poll stations to exercise franchise. Such was the scale of violent rigging witnessed during the elections to the Chennai Corporation council on Friday, October 13, that it left no section of the city's six million plus population untouched. Those who did not go out to vote and ended up as victims or witnesses of the violence got a good dose of what happened out there from the television news bulletins—the viewers could be expected to be intelligent enough to sieve facts from the load of charges and counter charges that the Sun TV of the DMK and the Jaya TV of the AIADMK dished out while 'reporting' the shameful events.

Polling opened at seven in the morning but goons, armed with casuarinas and bamboo sticks had already driven the voters out and taken charge of polling booths in several of the 155 wards of Chennai, eyewitnesses said. In some places, swords and sickles were used to engage rival party cadres. Whenever the offender was a member of the ruling DMK or its ally, the police turned a blind eye. Journalists, particularly the photographers trying to record the violence, were targeted for special treatment by the political rowdies. An enumeration of the victims has not been attempted yet, though the police had the names of just three of its officers who sustained injuries.

While the opposition AIADMK leader Ms Jayalalithaa called the polls "a joke, nothing but murder of democracy", her ally and MDMK general secretary Vaiko went to the extent of alleging that the ruling DMK had hired murderers and other violent criminals brought out of jails on parole just for the purpose of rigging the Chennai elections.

Chief minister M. Karunanidhi dismissed the charge that his party and his son had unleashed the unprecedented violence to rig the Friday poll in the city. Emerging with a broad smile along with son Stalin after casting his vote at the polling station near his Gopalapuram residence that morning, he told reporters that Jayalalithaa was lying in charging the DMK with poll violence. The truth, according to him, was that she had planned the violence in Chennai "as a pilot project" for worse things to follow throughout Tamil Nadu and had even scripted a war-cry for her minions. Campaigning for an Assembly by-election in Madurai, she had declared at a public rally on October eight that people must crush the DMK leadership "just like the slaying of Narakasura", the demon king whose death is celebrated on Diwali.

The Narakasura statement, said Karunanidhi, was proof of Jayalalithaa's conspiracy to disrupt the Chennai elections and blame it on his party. Meeting reporters the following day at the Anna Arivalayam, the DMK headquarters in the city, the chief minister came up with yet another 'evidence' of the AIADMK role in the violence. Right from the early morning of Friday, Jaya TV had begun running a scroll asking people to send telegrams to the President and the National Human Rights Commission to complain about the DMK violence and that clearly bared their murderous intentions, argued Karunanidhi.

At the press conference, the chief minister also exhibited photographs of his own party members who were injured at the hands of the AIADMK goons—one of them had almost lost an eye. The police got a clean chit at his hands. The state election commissioner (SEC) D. Chandrasekaran did a commendable job unlike the predecessor Palanichamy, who got extensions for life from the then chief minister Jayalalithaa for being pliable. That she was now accusing him and the SEC was "like the devil quoting the scriptures," said Karunanidhi.

But then, there were any number of reporters and photographers, television crew included, who had seen for themselves the macabre display of poll rigging in Chennai. True, the AIADMK members were down in equal strength with their sticks and sickles but what made the big difference and delivered the 'final victory' for the ruling alliance was the police support that it got.

Both the state director general of police D.Mukherjee and the Chennai police commissioner Ms Letika Saran are officers of great integrity and professional competence. But as we have seen quite a few of their ilk crack under intense political pressure to take sides, these two too appear to have succumbed to the 'force of circumstances'. TV cameras covering their joint-conference with the media on the poll day did not get a single visual of these two meeting the scribes in their eyes, while insisting that polling went off 'smoothly but for some stray incidents'.

Film star Vijayakanth, hoping to make a big impression in the tier-3 of governance (after the Parliament and the State Assembly) with his Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam launched only September last year, was clearly rattled witnessing the real-life replay of what he must have only enacted in movies fighting dozens of deadly villains barehanded. He led his followers to petition Commissioner Saran alleging large-scale violence by the DMK and told reporters outside that he had all along assumed that booth-capturing and bogus voting took place in the afternoons after some section of the genuine voters exercised franchise, but this was the first time that armed goons took over polling booths right in the morning and the police looked the other way. "I will build up makkal sakthi (people's power) to put a stop to these atrocities," declared the star politician.

The opposition politicians and 'hostile' media apart, even the common folk on the streets of Chennai during the weekend appeared convinced that most of the violence was orchestrated by the DMK and allies. In fact, one of the DMK's partners, the Marxists, too complained about the poll violence and demanded repelling. It was unfortunate that for someone hoping to soon don the chief minister's mantle in Tamil Nadu, son Stalin had to face such barrage of accusations from all sides.

Perhaps the strongest indictment of the first family came from the saffron brigade. The Hindu Munnani founder Rama Gopalan convened a press conference at his Chennai office to speak of the "new low in Indian politics" that the "unprecedented violence and rigging" witnessed in the Friday poll in the city. "In all my 80 years of life, I have not seen this kind of brute violence and rigging of elections. The police actively collaborated with the ruling party in this gross violation of democracy," said the Hindu leader, extending support to star Vijayakanth's makkal sakthi pledge.

And then Rama Gopalan came with his punch line. "Perhaps one way of ending such violence would be for us to concede that for the next 50 years, the family of the DMK chief Karunanidhi, right down to his grandson, could hold positions of power without having to face any elections."

In the midst of all this outburst of anger and hurt, some voices of conciliation and debate over administrative tinkering have popped up. One of them was from a senior IAS official known for his integrity and competence and he has this to say. 'Why not disband the state election commission and bring all the elections, down to the grass root level of panchayat polls, under the control of the Election Commission of India, so that the interference of the ruling party of the day does not pollute the electoral process?'

If Jayalalithaa during her regime thought it fit to give extensions for life to the then state election commissioner Palanichamy so that she could run the SEC her way in the conduct of the civic polls, the present SEC Chandrasekaran is said to be a close relative of the DMK minister Durai Murugan. The perception that Caesar's wife must be above all suspicion finds no place in Dravidian politics.