The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) General Secretary Jayalalithaa emerged victorious from the Srirangam constituency defeating her DMK rival N. Anand by a margin of 41,848 votes.
Ms. Jayalalithaa polled 1,05,328 votes against Mr. Anand’s tally of 63,480.
An EVM machine with about 980 votes registered was not taken up for counting as the numbers in the outer case and the EVM machine did not tally.
The thumping win of Ms. Jayalalithaa, the Chief Ministerial candidate of the AIADMK led front, was quite on the expected lines. She is the first Chief Ministerial candidate to be elected from the Central region of the state.
Ms. Jayalalithaa is in the electoral fray for the sixth consecutive time since 1989. In her maiden attempt in 1989, Ms. Jayalalithaa was elected to the Assembly for the first time from Bodinayakkanur. In 1991 elections, she contested from two constituencies, Kangeyam and Burgur seats and registered handsome victories in both. Following AIADMK’s thumping win, she became the Chief Minister for the first time.
Ms. Jayalalithaa preferred to retain the Burgur seat and resigned from Kangeyam. She suffered a defeat at the hands of DMK novice E. G. Sugavanam in Burgur in 1996 elections.
In the 2001 Assembly elections, her nomination for all the four constituencies were rejected. After the AIADMK captured power in the state, she contested the by-election from Andipatti constituency in Theni district in 2002 and got elected to Assembly.
In the last election, Ms. Jayalalithaa was returned from Andipatti constituency for the second consecutive term, to become the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.
In the current election, Ms. Jayalalithaa maintained a healthy lead right from the first round and did not look back. Though, Srirangam was a safe bet for Ms. Jayalalithaa, she did not take chances and campaigned vigorously for four days immediately after filing nomination. In fact, she commenced her state wide campaign only from this temple town.
She kept a close monitoring of the feedback and grievances of the electorate during the whole campaign period.
