CHENNAI: When nominations for the 2024 Lok Sabha election were filed for Ramanathapuram constituency, there was a lot of noise about five other ‘Pannerselvams’ who were contesting against the former Tamil Nadu chief minister and expelled AIADMK leader O Panneerselvam (OPS), fighting as an independent backed by the BJP.
The results on Tuesday however showed that the ‘dummy’ candidates failed to make any significant dent in the electoral fortunes of the ‘original’. Together, they polled only around 9,000 votes, while OPS got 3.42 lakh votes, finishing second behind the winner Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)’s Navaskani who polled 5.09 lakh votes.
All the other five Pannerselvams (one actually is Pannir Selvam) contested as independents.
While the former chief minister’s name on the polling booth was given as Pannerselvam O S/O Ottakarathevar, one of the “dummy” candidates went by the name Panneerselvam O S/O Ochappan. The other ‘dummy’ candidates went by the name Panneerselvam S/O Oyyadevar, Panneerselvam O S/O Oyyaram and Pannerselvam O S/O Ochatthevar. The fifth one was Pannirselvam M S/O Malaiyandi.
Curiously, there was one Nawas Khan and a K Sasikani who also contested as independents in the same seat. They too did not make any dent in Navaskani’s final vote tally, polling just 3,000 votes.
Dummy candidates are often pitched by opponents in elections to confuse voters and divert votes away from the actual candidate.
Nobody knows this better than Chidambaram MP and VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan; in the 2016 TN assembly elections, he lost from the Kattumannarkoil constituency by 87 votes. An independent candidate with the name T Thirumavalavan had polled 289 votes, virtually deciding the VCK leader’s fate.