Soaring heat poses new threat to political campaign in Tamil Nadu

But soaring heat is seen as a challenge for all political parties for their campaigns.

For each political party, irrespective of their opponent, to counter during their campaign, soaring heat has been a major challenge to pull the crowd in late forenoon campaigning. To combat the weather challenge, political parties are using different ways to reach out to the people. DMK, in one such meeting, came up with the idea to beat the heat by distributing ice water bottles, ice curds, and watermelons to the crowds.

As Tamil Nadu faces the Lok Sabha in the first phase, roughly 20 days are still there for political leaders to reach the voters with their policies and to attract the voters to seat the maximum number of MP seats. But soaring heat is seen as a challenge for all political parties for their campaigns. The Chennai Regional Meteorology Department forecasts that the maximum temperature is likely to rise gradually up to 2 degrees C in isolated pockets over Tamil Nadu during the next few days.

"Due to hot and humid conditions and warmer nights, discomfort weather is likely in isolated pockets over Tamil Nadu during the next five days," a bulletin from Chennai RMC reads. To escape from the heat, crowds in one DMK election campaign, which was held around 12.30 pm, were seen using pluck cards as fans to get air and were taking shades with pluck cards and party flags. A few years ago, they used bottled water and washed their bodies amidst extreme heat.

"Despite extreme heat, we are here to support our leader and to expose the BJP and its policies," says a Kathavarayan who participated in the DMK Udhyanidhi Stalin campaign. All parties, like the DMK, AIADMK, and BJP, have late forenoon campaign schedules as fewer days are left for the election.

"We are distributing cold water, curd and watermelon to people to manage heat. The crowd here is on their own to oppose the BJP," said DMK Functionary, who helped the public beat the heat. Even though efforts were being made to manage the heart, the crowd's common voices were like leaders coming to campaign on time and some had to be arranged to escape from the heat. The voting for all 39 seats in Tamil Nadu will go to the polls in the first phase on April 19.

During the 2019 general elections, the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance, which comprised Congress, VCK, MDMK, CPI, CPI(M), IUML, MMK, KMDK, TVK, and AIFB, registered a landslide victory by winning 38 of the 39 seats. In 2019, DMK won 23 Lok Sabha seats with a 33.2 per cent vote share, Congress bagged 8 seats with a 12.9 per cent vote and CPI won two seats in Tamil Nadu. The election for 543 Lok Sabha seats in the country will be held in seven phases starting April 19. Nearly 97 crore voters are eligible to cast votes in the general election.

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