TIRUCHY: At least three out of the 11 AIADMK Ministers who lost a chance to get re-elected in the 2021 Assembly poll faced defeat at the hands of candidates who were their erstwhile party colleagues. Ahead of the election, a total of 27 out of 30 Ministers in the AIADMK cabinet were provided an opportunity to contest the polls. While 16 of them managed to win, 11 failed to retain their seats.
A closer look at the results reveal that three such former Ministers – Transport Minister MR Vijayabaskar, Law Minister C Ve Shanmugam and Minister for Industries MC Sampath – were defeated by candidates who were once with the AIADMK.
In Karur, MR Vijayabaskar lost by a margin of 12,448 votes to DMK’s Senthil Balaji. Before joining the DMK in 2018, Senthil Balaji was Transport Minister in the Cabinet of former CM J Jayalalithaa in 2016. When Senthil Balaji held the post of AIADMK district secretary in Karur, MR Vijayabaskar worked under him. Similarly, in Cuddalore, MC Sampath lost to DMK candidate G Iyappan by a margin of 6,559 votes.
Iyappan, a former DMK MLA, shifted camp to the AIADMK after the party leadership denied him a seat in the 2011 Assembly election. After building close relations with MC Sampath in the AIADMK for over nine years, Iyappan returned to the DMK and defeated his former party colleague.
C Ve Shanmugam lost by a margin of 14,868 votes to R Lakshmanan, who was former district secretary of the Villupuram unit of the AIADMK and also a Rajya Sabha MP in 2013. However, frustrated over the elevation of Shanmugam to the district secretary post, Lakshmanan shifted camp to the DMK just a few months before the election and managed to defeat him.