MADURAI: A single vote can change the fate of a candidate — a common adage in politics — became ground reality in the Tiruppattur Assembly constituency of Sivaganga district, where TVK candidate R Seenivasa Sethupathy defeated DMK’s four-time MLA and former minister K R Periakaruppan by a margin of just one vote. This is the slimmest vote margin in the history of Tamil Nadu elections.
Analysis of the round-wise data showed a favourable lead for Periakaruppan over Sethupathy with a margin of 902 votes at the end of round one (of 30). Periakaruppan maintained the lead until round 25, when he had 77,773 votes and Sethupathy had 76,646 votes.
The first shift in favour of the TVK candidate occurred in round 26, when Sethupathy took the lead by 199 votes. In subsequent rounds, Sethupathy extended his lead — to 606 votes in the 27th round, 691 in the 28th, 788 in the 29th and 819 in the 30th round.
At the end of round 30, Sethupathy had secured 83,010 votes while Periakaruppan had 82,191. The trend reversed during the counting of postal votes, where Seenivasa Sethupathy secured 365 votes and Periakaruppan secured 1,183 votes. At the end of counting, Sethupathy emerged victorious against Periakaruppan by polling one vote more than him.
The data also showed that the highest margin between the two candidates was 4,902 votes in round 10, while the average difference was 2,637 votes.
It was the only Assembly constituency in the state where the winner was officially announced only around 1.15 am on Tuesday due to the thin margin difference. After counting of EVM and postal votes, officials conducted multiple rechecks of invalid votes following challenges from the DMK to finalise the winning candidate. With this win, the total seats won by TVK reached 108.
K R Karthikeyan (45), a resident of the R Palakurichi village panchayat — where voters (total of 2,012) had boycotted the election demanding the police station limits and voting rights be shifted from the Tiruppattur seat to Ponnamaravathi — said that the electors might have favoured Periakaruppan had he heeded their demands. The issue remains unresolved, although the tahsildar has collected the electors’ details following the boycott.
DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin, while responding to reporters in Chennai, stated that party president M K Stalin had held discussions on the matter and decided to approach the court to challenge the result.