In Tiruchendur constituency, former AIADMK bigwig Anitha R Radhakrishnan ironically wrested the seat for the DMK as the ruling party’s nominee this time. Anitha defeated AIADMK’s Amman T Narayanan by a big margin. The DMK retained the Vandavasi seat in the Vanniyar heartland in the north, with its nominee J Kamalakannan beating his AIADMK rival P Munusamy by over 38,000 votes. Significantly, the DMDK, led by actor-turned-politician Vijayakanth, finished a miserable third in both places.
As yet another dramatic byelection process drew to a close, with the campaigning marred by charges of vote-for-cash by both the DMK and the AIADMK, violence and doling of freebies by the ruling party, political observers here say the results point to a clear pattern—the strength of the DMK-Congress alliance, which has won all the eight by-elections to the Assembly this year since the Thirumangalam bypoll in January 2009.
While the LS election results trend seems to be getting consolidated for the DMK-Congress combine, the AIADMK has, interestingly, done better in Vandavasi even after the PMK had quit Jayalalitha’s alliance recently.