PUDUCHERRY: For N Rangasamy, it is end of the road as Chief Minister of Puducherry. He won from Indira Nagar seat by a margin of 3,404 votes over INC’s V Aroumugham, a green horn. Yet his party, the All India NR Congress (AINRC), lost the elections as it could manage to win only eight seats in the 30-member Assembly. Rangasamy had been the CM of Puducherry for the most part from 2001 till 2016, except for over two-and-a-half years when he was out of power.
Now for the first time, he will be the Leader of Opposition as the AINRC is the second largest party in the Assembly. However, it is doubtful whether he would attend the Assembly session, going by the earlier times when he was toppled as Chief Minister. During 2008 and 2011, he did not attend Assembly sessions for the most part, except only once for a few minutes.
The new turn of events will certainly give him a hard time as far as sustaining the party base is concerned. Though he won, all his four ministers —P Rajavelu, N G Panneerselvam, T Thiagarajan and P R Siva—lost the elections, which along with the verdict is a statement on his governance.