Votes from the Madurai East Assembly segment of the Madurai Parliamentary constituency proved to be the trump card for the winning candidate R. Gopalakrishnan from the All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in the 16 Lok Sabha Elections.
The Madurai Parliamentary constituency comprises six assembly segments which are Melur, Madurai East, Madurai North, Madurai Central, Madurai South and Madurai West.
It may be recalled that votes from the Melur segment during the 2009 Parliamentary elections gave the then winner, DMK candidate M.K. Alagiri a major boost.
The predominantly rural enclave also recorded the highest voting percentage during the current elections despite having a smaller electorate than most other segments.
More than 1.94 lakh voters exercised their franchise from the Madurai East Assembly segment, which has the largest electorate in the constituency on April 24 this year, out of which the AIADMK candidate Mr. Gopalakrishnan secured 92,444 votes. With over 84,000 votes polled in the AIADMK candidate’s favour, Melur came second to the Madurai East this time around while deciding the fortunes of the winner.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan had garnered the least number of votes from the Madurai Central Segment among all the other assembly segments.
The Central segment has proved in the past to have a vote base for the DMK and this year too proved to be the third largest vote bank for DMK candidate V. Velusamy, who secured over 40,000 votes from the segment.
Trends regarding the number of ‘None of the above’ or NOTA votes polled in each segment proved to be diametrically opposite of the voter turnout and voting percentages in those segments. While Melur recorded the highest voting percentage, the number of NOTA votes polled in the segment were 1,235 which was the lowest among all the other Assembly segments.
The Madurai North Assembly segment which had a relatively low voter turnout of 65.15 per cent had the highest number of NOTA votes polled with 4,042 votes.
