IANS/Chennai
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa returned to the Tamil Nadu assembly yesterday crushing the opposition by a record victory in the Radkhakrishnan Nagar by-election.
Jayalalithaa polled 160,432 votes while her rival, Communist Party of India’s C Mahendran, got just 9,710 votes - a victory margin of a whopping 150,722 votes.
The total electorate in the constituency was around 245,000, and the chief minister bagged 65% of all votes polled.
Analysts said the result shows the vote banks of the opposition parties which boycotted the polls did not go to the CPI.
Mahendran was followed by independent candidate and social activist K R Ramaswamy, popularly known as “Traffic Ramaswamy” (4,590 votes) while 2,376 people opted for `None of the Above’ category.
While there were 28 candidates in the fray, only CPI’s Mahendran was viewed as a serious opponent for Jayalalithaa.
As noisy celebrations erupted at the AIADMK headquarters and outside Jayalalithaa’s residence, Tamil Nadu Governor K Rosaiah congratulated her over her landslide win.
Central Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan of the Bharatiya Janata Party conveyed his “heartfelt greetings” to Jayalalithaa on her mega victory.
AIADMK activists and leaders generously distributed sweets to all and sundry and burst firecrackers to celebrate.
An elated Jayalalithaa thanked voters and AIADMK supporters for her victory and said the result was a forerunner for the 2016 assembly election.
This is the seventh by-election victory for the AIADMK since it came to power in 2011. The party has won all the by-elections held since 2011.
In 2006, AIADMK’s P K Sekarbabu polled 84,462 votes in Radhakrishnan Nagar. In 2011, P Vetrivel of AIADMK got 83,777 votes and defeated Sekarbabu, who by then was in the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Vetrivel’s victory margin was over 31,000 votes.
Major opposition parties like the DMK, the Pattali Makkal Katchi, the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), the Congress, the BJP and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) stayed away from the contest on different pretexts.
The CPI and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) fielded Mahendran as their joint candidate.
The Radhakrishnan Nagar seat fell vacant after AIADMK’s Vetrivel resigned from the assembly to facilitate Jayalalithaa’s re-election.
Jayalalithaa, elected from Srirangam in 2011, lost that seat and the chief minister’s post after a court in Bengaluru convicted her in the disproportionate assets case.
The Karnataka High Court later acquitted her. Jayalalithaa was again sworn in as chief minister, but she had to get elected to the assembly within six months.
The Karnataka government challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile in Madhya Pradesh, BJP candidate Chander Singh Sisodia defeated the Congress Party’s Subhash Sojatia by a margin of 12,945 votes in Garoth assembly by-election.
In Meghalaya, the ruling Congress won the by-election from Chokpot, with Bluebell Sangma snatching the seat from the Garo National Council (GNC) regional party.
In Tripura, ruling the CPM retained by huge margins two assembly seats, but the BJP edged out the Congress to take the second spot.
The CPM won from Pratapgarh for the ninth consecutive time and in Surma for the eighth time in a row, officials said.
Supporters of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party celebrate after Jayalalithaa’s victory in the R K Nagar by-election in Chennai yesterday.
