COIMBATORE: V S Matheshwaran of DMK ally Kongunadu Makkal Desia Katchi (KMDK) won the election from the Namakkal Lok Sabha constituency by a margin of 29,112 votes. He defeated AIADMK’s Tamilmani by polling 4,62,036 votes.
BJP’s KP Ramalingam and NTK’s Kanimozhi secured the third and fourth places, respectively. A tight contest was expected between Matheshwaran, Tamilmani and Ramalingam. Tamilmani shot into the lead securing 1,089 votes in the first round.
But the trend changed in the very next round in favour of Matheswaran. The vote margin between the two in the 10th round was 15,908 and in the 12th round, it rose to 21,707. From then on till the end, Matheswaran got at least 2,000 votes in each round. The lead was 28,704 in the 22nd round at 9 pm.
BJP’s Ramalingam went ahead of NTK candidate Kanimozhi with a margin of around 8,500 votes. In 2019, AKP Chinraj of the KMDK had defeated AIADMK candidate P Kaliappan and in 2014 AIADMK had defeated the DMK. This is the second time the KMDK has won the constituency with a decent vote margin.