RK Nagar bypoll: 3 big candidates file nominations

Chennai: Former minister and AIADMK presidium chairman E. Madhusudhanan, ejected AIADMK deputy general secretary TTV Dhinakaran and DMK candidate N. Marudhu Ganesh filed nomination papers for the December 21 RK Nagar Assembly byelection before the Returning Officer K. Veluswamy at the latter's office in Tondiarpet on Friday.

Nominations opened on November 27 but these three main gladiators chose to file their papers only on this "very auspicious muhurtham day". TTV outscored the others in terms of the huge number of supporters who accompanied him, notwithstanding the presence of the hawkeyed Election Commission observers. This byelection was earlier slated for April 12 but got cancelled by the Election Commission with barely two days to go, alleging massive distribution of cash for votes.

TTV was arrested by the Delhi police on April 25 for allegedly trying to bribe EC officials to get the AIADMK's Two-Leaves symbol for his Amma faction. He is now out on bail and is making a strong bid to deny victory for the party's candidate Madhusudhanan, if not win himself. DMK's Marudhu Ganesh hopes to gain from this battle between the erstwhile 'brothers', but then, he also has some substantive ‘arithmetic’ reason for his stout optimism.

When she won the seat in the May 2016 general election, Jayalalithaa could manage a margin of a mere 39,545 votes defeating DMK's Ms Simla Muthuchozhan, which was a steep fall for her considering that she had scored a record 1,50,000 vote margin over CPI's Mahendran in the June 27, 2015 byelection after managing acquittal from the Karnataka high court in the disproportionate assets case.

Her loyalist P.Vetrivel had vacated his RK Nagar seat to facilitate Amma to return as CM in the resultant byelection and was rewarded by her with the powerful post of party's north Chennai secretary. Vetri is now TTV's campaign chief at RK Nagar. “Jayalalithaa could only manage less than 40,000 votes in the last poll whereas the EC has informed the court just 10 days back that 45,000 bogus votes were detected and deleted. Most of those bogus votes were theirs (AIADMK)”, said DMK spokesman TKS Elangovan. “In addition to this factor, the ruling party is split and also, the people are so disgusted. Our Marudhu will win hands down”, the Rajya Sabha MP told DC.

The nominations in RK Nagar close on Monday. Withdrawals are allowed till Thursday and the final list of candidates will be announced the same evening for the Dec 21 election. Counting is on Dec 24 and resulted are expected the same day.