The ruling AIADMK may have to walk the extra mile, apart from taking back members of the breakaway group, AMMK, to win the Nanguneri and Vikravandi Assembly seats, both due for byelections.
This becomes evident if the sum of votes polled by the ruling party and the AMMK in the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections is taken into account.
Nanguneri and Vikravandi come under the Tirunelveli and Villupuram Lok Sabha constituencies, which are located in the south and the north, respectively.
Considering the AIADMK’s decision to contest all the seats in the recent byelections to 22 Assembly constituencies, the ruling party, which is on a wafer thin majority, is expected to field its nominees in Nanguneri and Vikravandi. Besides, it contested the two seats in the 2016 Assembly polls.
Of the two places, the ruling party appears to be far behind the DMK in Nanguneri, where the AIADMK got 51,596 votes and the AMMK got 15,114 votes in the Lok Sabha election, totalling 66,710 votes. The DMK polled 86,306 votes taking its vote share to 50.7%.
DMK yet to decide
It is not known whether the DMK, which won the Tirunelveli Lok Sabha seat, will field a candidate in Nanguneri or whether its ally, the Congress would contest from there.
Just as the ruling party, the principal Opposition party too put up its nominees in all the 22 Assembly seats, including where the Congress, as a constituent of the DMK-led coalition, was in the fray in 2016.
The byelection in Nanguneri has been necessitated as H. Vasanthakumar of the Congress resigned from the Assembly after winning the Kanniyakumari Lok Sabha seat.
Notwithstanding lack of clarity on the issue, the presence of the Congress in the DMK-led front has made the Opposition more formidable than the ruling party’s combine as the Congress, since 1977, has won the seat three times (1984, 2006 and 2016). The AIADMK won four times (1980, 1991, 2001 and 2011) while the DMK, the Janata Party and the Communist Party of India won once each.
In Vikravandi, the PMK, an ally of the AIADMK, polled 74,819 votes and the AMMK, 8,545 votes, aggregating 83,364 votes in the Lok Sabha elections. This was just 68 votes less than what the DMK netted – 83,432 votes. Here, the Opposition’s vote share was about 46.8%.
Created during the 2008 delimitation exercise, the Vikravandi Assembly constituency went to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2011 when the party was part of the AIADMK-led front. Five years later, it was bagged by the DMK in a closely-contested battle when the PMK finished third and the AIADMK second.
