AMMK trounced in all three bypolls in Vellore

The votes they secured were less than the margin of victory, raising questions about the party leadership’s decision to field them again. While DMK’s AC Vilwanathan defeated AIADMK’s Jothiramalingaraja by a margin of 36,585 votes in Ambur, AMMK candidate R Balasubramani polled a mere 8,819 votes. 

Viswanathan garnered 94,904 votes and his AIADMK rival, 58,319 votes. In the Gudiyattam (reserved) constituency, S Kathavarayan of the DMK won by a margin of 27,161 votes over his AIADMK rival R Moorthy. Here, the AMMK candidate Jayanti Padmanabhan managed to get only 8,148 votes. NOTA garnered 2,829 votes in Gudiyattam and another 1,839 votes in Ambur assembly segment. 

TTV Dhinakaran’s strategy of fielding the same disqualified candidates in the three constituencies failed miserably. As a AIADMK cadre Kasinathan from Gudiyattam said, “Voters felt that having won on Amma’s support, their switching allegiance to AMMK amounted to betrayal and hence voted against them.” 

In the Sholingur Assembly segment, former AIADMK MLA NG Parthiban who contested for the Arkonam Parliament seat failed to succeed, while the winner was a low-profile AIADMK candidate G Sampathu who won by a margin of more than 16,479 votes over his DMK rival A Asokan. 

Samapthu garnered 1,03,271 votes while Asokan’s tally was 86,792 votes. In contrast, AMMK candidate TG Mani was only 12,819 votes. Of the total 1,163 postal votes in Sholingur Assembly segment, Asokan got 697 votes, Sampathu 274 votes and three Independents (S Malayrajan, P Gokulakrishnan and Nirosha) received 20, 26 and 1 respectively. 

Of the rest, 74 were rejected and 12 were NOTA. In Ambur assembly constituency, of the 842 postal ballots, 600 went to the DMK, 97 for AIADMK, 95 were rejected and 5 were NOTA. 

In Gudiyattam constituency, there were 842 postal votes, of which Vilwanathan secured 600, Jothiramalingaraja 97, and Independents A Kareem Basha, N Selvamani, S Rajkumar S Salauddin and R Balakrishnan received 8, 12, 1, 2 and 22 votes respectively. Rejected votes numbered 95, while another 5 were for NOTA.