The Tiruvallur (SC) Lok Sabha constituency is set to see a tough fight in the coming election. The contest will see AIADMK incumbent Dr P Venugopal take on contenders from the DMDK, VCK, CPI and Congress.
The constituency is a relatively new one, having been carved out during the delimitation of 2009. The constituency is composed of six Assembly segments, of which two are reserved for candidates from SC communities, and all of them come under the Tiruvallur district.
The AIADMK seems to have an edge in this contest if the voting patterns of the 2011 Assembly elections are anything to go by. All the six Assembly segments had been won by the AIADMK-led alliance, with AIADMK taking five seats and the DMDK taking the remainder.
The Tiruvallur constituency had existed before, featuring in the first three general elections of this country - in 1951, 1957 and 1962. It was dissolved in the first delimitation ahead of the 1967 election, and a number of its Assembly segments had gone into forming the Sriperumbudur (SC) LS constituency. The first LS representative of the constituency was Congress veteran Maragatham Chandrasekhar. The following two elections too saw the Congress take the seat, with R Govindarajulu Naidu winning in 1957 and V Govindaswamy Naidu in 1962.
The first occupant of the seat after it was brought back in 2009, was Dr P Venugopal of the AIADMK, who had
defeated DMK’s S Gayathri, DMDK’s R Suresh and 11 other candidates.
This time, Venugopal will be squaring off against VCK’s general secretary D Ravikumar, DMDK’s V Yuvaraj (who had contested on the DMDK ticket in the North Chennai constituency in 2009) and yet-to-be announced candidates of the CPI and Congress.