Tiruvarur:
A huge wave of applause and cheer ran across the crowds as their Chief Minister said, "All those in Tiruvarur are my relatives."
As the DMK president M Karunanidhi launched the party's election campaign on Wednesday from his hometown Tiruvarur - a constituency the DMK has won five times including the last three times in a row - he expanded the list of beneficiaries of his magnanimity.
Addressing a mammoth election rally, he promised free laptops to all students joining college, expanding the party's earlier announcement of laptops to students from backward classes, SC and ST communities. He said his party always implemented all schemes promised in the manifesto.
Karunanidhi has won nine times from the DMK's bastion, Chennai. Analysts say his homecoming is perhaps due to the worry that the 2G spectrum scam could dent its urban vote bank.
However, the unease in the constituency of Tiruvarur lies outside town limits, that is, in its villages. It is the disenchantment in the villages that the DMK might find harder to fight than the 2G shadow.
''He gives us rice at Re. 1 a kilo, but salt is sold at Rs. 15 a kilo and vegetables are so expensive,'' said a local resident.
So, if the DMK Chief's sustained tradition of freebies will give him an edge or not remains to be seen.
''All that were public schemes launched with public money. There are no freebies. We will win,'' said M Rajendran, AIADMK Candidate.
Over the last five years the ruling DMK spent more than twelve thousand crore rupees on freebies - from free colour televisions to free concrete houses and health insurance.
With the Jayalalithaa led opposition striking a formidable alliance, analysts say the ruling DMK doesn't want take any chances in its fight for a second term.
And the party taking the freebies route yet again, the state's development agenda seems to have been pushed to the back burner.