South Chennai has been a historically important constituency since it has given many stalwarts to Lok Sabha — former President R Venkatraman, former Union Finance Minister TT Krishnamachari, DMK founder and former Chief Minister CN Annadurai and former Union Industries Minister Murasoli Maran. Former Union Minister TR Baalu and actress Vaijayanthi Mala Bali too have been elected from here.
Acclaimed as the constituency of the ‘educated’ after the delimitation process in 2008, it covers Virugambakkam, Saidapet, T Nagar, Mylapore, Velachery and Shozhinganallur Assembly constituencies.
IT professionals, fishermen, traders, construction workers and film industry workers are among the dominant population of this constituency, which has an electorate of 17,14,987 (8,55,148 women and 8,59,548 men).
The AIADMK has fielded Dr J Jayavardhan (26), son of former Assembly Speaker D Jayakumar, while the DMK has fielded veteran TKS Elangovan.
Of the six Assembly constituencies in South Chennai Parliamentary constituency, five are represented by AIADMK, except for Virugambakkam which is represented by a DMDK MLA.
Since the AIADMK had announced the list of candidates much earlier, the party’s campaign here is on in full swing.
In the 2009 LS polls, AIADMK’s Chitlapakkam C Rajendran trounced DMK veteran RS Bharathy.
The DMDK came third while the BJP’s L Ganesan bagged 42,923 votes in the constituency.
In 2004, the then sitting MP and Union Shipping Minister TR Baalu trounced his AIADMK rival and incumbent Triplicane MLA Badar Saeed by a margin of around 2.2 lakh votes. T R Baalu had represented this constituency since 1998 and won four consecutive elections before shifting to Sriperumbudur.