SIVAGANGA: Thursday brought slight relief to the beleaguered Congress when it retained the Sivaganga constituency, with Karti P Chidambaram pipping his main challenger from BJP H Raja to the post. Rest all contenders lost their deposits as they failed to clear the magic figure of 1,88,702 votes. Manamadurai Assembly segment too saw a similar fate befalling all bypoll candidates, except those of AIADMK and DMK.
In Sivaganga, 27 candidates, including DMK alliance’s Karti P Chidambaram and AIADMK alliance’s BJP nominee H Raja, were in the fray. Karti won handsomely, bagging 5,66,104 votes – 4,61,426 more than he secured in 2014. Karti was contesting the MP election for the second time from here.
H Raja managed to secure 2,33,860 votes – 1,00,097 more than his 2014 tally. The vote percentage of Karti stood at 52.19, while it was 21.55 for H Raja.
The results were interesting insofar as deposits were concerned. Apart from Karti and Raja none could take home their deposit. Only four others – MNM’s Snehan (22,931), NTK’s Sakti Priya (72,240), AMMK’s V Pandi (1,22,534) and independent candidate P Rajendhiran (11,167) – crossed the 10,000 mark.
B Manickam TagoreManamadurai presented a similar picture, with AIADMK’s S Nagarajan winning by a margin of 8,194 votes. Nagarajan polled 85,228 votes against DMK’s Ilakkiyadasan K’s 77,034 votes to ensure the segment was retained by the AIADMK.
Former AIADMK MLA Mariappan Kennedy garnered 20,395 under the AMMK’s banner. Apart from Ilakkiyadasan and Nagarajan, all others lost their deposits. There was a marginal decrease in the number of NOTA votes, with 1,818 preferring no candidate against the 2016’s figure of 2,193.