According to reports, DMDK party officials were in favour of boycotting the polls like AIADMK. But the party leader, actor-turned-politician Vijaykant, Sunday decided to test the party's strength.

In the 2006 assembly elections the party went on its own and only Vijaykant emerged victorious.

Disagreeing with the AIADMK's poll boycott decision, political commentator Cho Ramaswamy told IANS: 'The boycott will enable Vijayakanth's DMDK to improve its vote share.'

But Ramaswamy does not think the DMDK will gain any permanent advantage.

'The advantage for DMDK will be of transitory appearance as everybody knows that AIADMK boycotted the polls. Vijaykant has a good chance of improving his vote share,' he said.

The DMDK contested in all the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in Puducherry on its own in the recent Lok Sabha polls.

In Tamil Nadu it secured over over 2.9 million votes out of around 30 million votes polled, thereby getting around 10 percent of the vote share. The party came third in 29 seats out of the 40 it contested.

Though the DMDK has increased its vote share marginally over its 8.33 percent in the 2006 Tamil Nadu assembly elections, it has fallen far short of its initial expectations.

Eight DMDK candidates got over 100,000 votes and a couple of them got over 90,000.