Chennai, May 23
Bucking the national trend that favoured the BJP, the DMK-led alliance on Thursday led in a whopping 36 of the 38 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu, dealing a major blow to the ruling AIADMK and its allies.
Prominent candidates of the DMK and its allies like the Congress, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), Communist Party of India (CPI) and others were leading over their rivals belonging to the AIADMK-led alliance across the state, Election Commission officials said.
As per the trends available from the counting centres, the DMK was leading in 23 places, the Congress in eight, CPM and CPI in two each and VCK and IUML in one seat each.
The MDMK, KMDK and IJK contested under DMK’s “rising sun” symbol. On its own, the DMK was leading on 18 seats. Tamil Nadu has 39 Lok Sabha seats. The EC had rescinded the poll in Vellore on the grounds of money play by the DMK candidate. The results are a big blow to the ruling AIADMK as its number of members in the Lok Sabha will drastically go down if the current trends continue till the end.
The BJP contested and lost all five seats including that of Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan (Kanyakumari).
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, under the leadership of then Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK contested on its own in 39 seats and won 37. The remaining two seats went to the BJP (Kanyakumari) and PMK (Dharmapuri).
The star candidates of DMK this time like former Union Ministers T.R. Baalu, A. Raja and Dayanidhi Maran were in the lead. Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi has won.
Prominent Congress candidates Karti P Chidambaram, H Vasanthakumar, S Jothimani and Thirunavukarasar were also on the victory lap.
The Lok Sabha polls saw a four-cornered contest. The two major fronts are: the AIADMK-led front comprising the PMK, BJP, DMDK, TMC, PT, PNK and others and the DMK-led front consisting of the Congress, MDMK, IUML, CPI, CPM, VCK, KMDK and IJK. — IANS
Kanimozhi wins
DMK leader Kanimozhi, daughter of the late party patriarch M Karunanidhi won from Thoothukudi by defeating her BJP rival by more than three lakh votes. Kanimozhi trounced BJP leader and Tamil Nadu unit president T Soundararajan by a margin of 3.47 lakh votes.
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2YN11OJ
via Today’s News Headlines
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