Residents of areas falling under the Alandur Assembly constituency will cast two votes each on April 24. One will be to elect the MP for the Sriperumbudur Lok Sabha constituency, while the other would be to elect a representative to fill the vacant seat in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. As the AIADMK heads into the by-election with the confidence of being the ruling party, the DMDK will be fighting for pride and to retain the seat, which it had won in the 2011 elections.
The by-election was necessitated by the resignation of disgruntled former DMDK presidium chairman Panrutti S Ramachandran. He won the seat in 2011 Assembly polls by a slender margin of 5,754 votes, as a candidate of the AIADMK-led alliance. Ramachandran also quit the DMDK and has since joined the AIADMK.
The Alandur constituency almost entirely consists of localities that were brought under the Chennai Corporation during the civic body’s expansion in 2011. Despite how close it is to the core areas of Chennai and its central placement within Chennai’s much larger sphere of urban influence, most of the areas in the constituency do not have infrastructure or amenities that match up to the core city. This, combined with the fact that the population of the constituency has seen searing growth since the 2011 Assembly election is bound to place an increased strain on already inadequate infrastructure. In less than three years since the last Assembly polls, the number of voters on the electoral rolls has grown a whopping 29.1 per cent.
These issues are likely to be on the mind of the voters, who have expressed reservations over the fact that the needs of their constituency are drowned out by the high-decibel run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.
The AIADMK is going into the battle with confidence, given that by-elections go in favour of the ruling party more often than not. The party has fielded V N P Venkatraman, a businessman. The DMDK gave the ticket to M Kamaraja, the party’s West Chennai district secretary. The DMK’s nominee is advocate RS Bharathi. The Aam Aadmi Party named journalist and writer ‘Gnani’ V Sankaran as its candidate. Among the independents, the most notable face is that of K Sasi Perumal, the Gandhian who was in the spotlight for his fast demanding prohibition.