AIADMK candidate P. Rajkumar will be the next Coimbatore Mayor.
He defeated his nearest rival R. Nandhakumar (BJP) by a margin of 2,91,343 votes in the by-election held on September 18.
He secured 4,20,104 votes — 69.96 per cent of the total of 6,00,453 votes cast.
C. Padmanabhan of the CPI (M) lost deposit as he could not muster one-sixth of the total votes polled.
The DMK did not contest the elections.
The by-election was necessitated following the resignation of S.M. Velusamy (AIADMK) in May. He was removed from the post of the party’s district secretary too.
The by-election recorded a very low turn out of 46.53 per cent.
Mr. Rajkumar maintained an unassailable lead over Mr. Nandhakumar right from the first round during counting.
The BJP candidate came second with 1,28,761 votes (21.44 per cent of the total votes).
He was the only candidate who got back the election deposit. The 14 other candidates lost deposit.
In 2011 mayoral poll, the polling percentage was 59.57 per cent.
The AIADMK polled 2,81,728 votes and DMK got 1,53,816 votes. Mr. Padmanabhan, who was the CPI (M) candidate then too, got 32,834. This time, the votes came down to 31,965.
All the 25 candidates had lost their deposit.
This time around, all the 14 Independents put together garnered 19,623 votes (3.27 per cent of the total votes).
The number of invalid postal votes was very high this time.
Of the total 591 votes polled, 289 were declared invalid, as they either did not have the declaration certificate or had valid signature. Of the 302 valid votes,
Mr. Rajkumar got 213 votes, Mr. Nandhakumar 63, and Mr. Padmanabhan 17 votes.
