The AIADMK crushed its opponent DMDK by a huge margin of 71,498 votes in the Pudukottai bypoll, for which the results were declared on Friday.
In the process, the AIADMK candidate VR Karthick Thondaiman polled over one lakh votes, which has happened only on a few rare occasions in Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.
It obtained 1,01,998 votes out of the total valid votes of 1,43,376 votes which amounts to 71.14 per cent. The DMDK, the only opposition which fielded a candidate managed to retain its deposit due to the absence of any other major political party in the fray.
The DMDK nominee N Jahir Hussain secured 30,500 votes, which comes to 21.27 per cent vote share.
Right from the first round, the AIADMK candidate shot into the lead and never looked back. The lead crossed over 23,000 in the sixth round itself.
The AIADMK crossed the 50,000 mark in the 11th round and the margin between the winner and the vanquished became more than 43,000 votes in the 14th round.
At the end of the 16th round, the margin between the two parties crossed 50,000 votes. The achieved margin of 71,498 is the highest in the last three bypolls after AIADMK came back to power, indicating that the party is gaining people’s support in every bypoll.
Although, the margin of victory is the highest for the AIADMK, lack of other parties helped actor Vijaykanth’s DMDK to poll the majority of the remaining votes and retain its deposit.
In the 2006 Assembly election, the AIADMK supported CPI candidate SP Muthukumaran got 65,466 votes (46.78 per cent). The AIADMK has obtained about 25 per cent additional votes in the bypoll. In Chennai AIADMK cadre celeberated the victory of party in the Pudukottai by-election in Chennai. Right from the beginning of the counting of votes, cadre thronged the party headquarters here and distributed sweets to the public and burst crackers to mark the happy occasion. Similar was the scene at the Poes Garden residence of Chief Minister and AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa. Cadres and functionaries thronged in large numbers and celebrated the victory. When the CM left for the Secretariat, they cheered her with slogans.