Though Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam cadres were less ambitious about winning the Tirupparankundram Assembly constituency by-election, the party was at least hoping to give a tough fight to AIADMK and narrow the victory margin.
However, the results on Tuesday turned out to be a disappointment as the party even failed to cross the number of votes it mobilised in the general election last May despite the total votes polled in the constituency in the by-election seeing an increase of more than 5,500 votes.
DMK’s candidate P. Saravanan polled 70,362 votes, 99 votes less than the votes received by party’s S. Manimaran in May.
In contrast, AIADMK nearly doubled its victory margin compared to May. The fact that the polling percentage in the by-election did not see much increase had the AIADMK camp little worried about the contest becoming closer.
Their worries, however, turned out to be unfounded as AIADMK’s A.K. Bose, who has already served as Thiruparankundram MLA from 2006-11, maintained comfortable lead from round one during the counting on Tuesday and finished with a margin of 42,760 votes.
Section of DMK cadres, who had gathered near Madurai Medical College, where the counting happened, attributed party’s poor show partially to the lack of a strong leadership in the southern districts and the cold war between few senior leaders in the district, which affected the campaign.
Blow to DMDK
The results showed BJP improving its ranking by finishing third despite receiving 768 votes less than what it got during May election. Party candidate R. Srinivasan registered 6,930 votes.
The severe blow in the by-election was for DMDK, which recorded only 4,105 votes (2.02 per cent) despite party leader Premalatha campaigning extensively in the constituency and Vijayakant addressing a campaign meeting.
Both the leaders, during their campaign, had reiterated the party’s special bond with the constituency as it was formally launched during a meeting in Thiruparankundram in 2005.
DMDK, which went alone in 2006 election, secured 14.8 per cent votes in Thiruparankundram. In 2011, when it was in alliance with AIADMK, party’s candidate A.K.T. Raja secured 58.7 per cent votes and won by a margin of nearly 50,000 votes.
In the May election, its ally CPI, as part of People’s Welfare Front, received 7.7 per cent votes and stood third.
