CHENNAI: Chief Minister and AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa on Tuesday won the by-election to RK Nagar Assembly constituency by a record margin of 1,50,722 votes and all other 27 candidates including CPI candidate C Mahendran lost their deposits. Mahendran polled just 9,710 votes. The total votes polled by Jayalalithaa is 1,60,432.
Thanking the voters for electing her with huge margin, Jayalalithaa in a statement here said the AIADMK's victory in this by-election is a precursor to the 2016 Assembly elections.
This is seventh victory for the ruling AIADMK in the by-election since May 2011. In the past, by-elections were held for Tiruchy West, Sankarankovil (SC), Pudukottai, Yercaud (ST), Alandur and Srirangam Assembly constituencies and the AIADMK has won all of them. With this, the strength of the AIADMK will go up again to 152 in the State Assembly. The strength of the other parties in the House is: DMDK (28), DMK (23), CPM (10), CPI (8), Congress (5), PMK (3), MMK (2), Puthiya Thamizhagam (2), AIFB (1).
The by-election was necessitated by the resignation of P Vetrivel, AIADMK member on May 17. Almost all opposition parties have boycotted the by-election for various reasons while the Left parties have put up CPI leader C Mahendran as their common candidate. Traffic Ramaswamy made desperate attempts to get the support of the opposition parties and met DMK president M Karunanidhi, DMDK founder Vijayakant and others. However, they did not support him.
Though the polling was peaceful except for a few stray incidents, the Election Commission ordered repoll in booth 181 in which 85.54 per cent of voters exercised their franchise. In all, …. per cent of voters cast their voters in the by-poll