With the election of four nominees of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) from the State, the strength of the party in Rajya Sabha will go up to 10. At present, the ruling party has seven MPs. One of its members along with five others is retiring on April 2 on expiry of term of their office. The DMK, which has now six members, will have five from April.
Among the outgoing MPs are Union Minister G.K. Vasan and Jayanthi Natarajan (both Congress); Vasanthi Stanley and S. Amir Ali Jinnah (both Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam – DMK) and N. Balaganga (AIADMK). T.K. Rangarajan (Communist Party of India – Marxist), is the only retiring member to get re-elected this time.
On Friday, the AIADMK’s four candidates - Sasikala Pushpa, Vijila Sathyananth, A. K. Selvaraj, S. Muthukaruppan – DMK’s Tiruchi N. Siva of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Mr. Rangarajan were all declared elected unopposed. Later, A.M.P. Jamaludeen, Assembly Secretary and Returning Officer for the Rajya Sabha elections, handed over certificates of election to Mr. Siva and Mr. Rangarajan.
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Of the AIADMK’s 10 members including the newly-elected batch, four hail from the southern districts – Ms. Sathyananth, Mr. Muthukaruppan and Mr Paul Manoj Pandian, all three from Tirunelveli, and Ms Pushpa, former Tuticorin Mayor. Mr. Manoj Pandian represented the Cheranmahadevi assembly constituency during 2001-2006. While Mr Selvaraj and Mr Arjunan are from the western districts of Coimbatore and The Nilgiris, R. Lakshmanan is from Villupuram in the northern belt and T. Rathinavel from Tiruchi in the central region. The other two MPs, V. Maitreyan and A.W. Rabi Bernard, have been residents of Chennai.