Saturday 27 / April / 2024
Chennai: TTV Dinakaran, nephew of All Indian Dravida Munnetra Kazhkam (AIADMK) ex Secretary General VK Sasikala, won the prestigious RK Nagar by-election, defeating AIADMK’s E Madhusudhanan and DMK’s N Marudhu Ganesh. Dinakaran won with 89,013 votes.
In 2016, now deceased Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa won RK Nagar with a difference of 39,545 seats. In 2017, Dhinakaran won with a difference of 40,707 seats, and has now overtaken Jayalalithaa's margin of victory, having recorded 50.32 per cent of the total count.
Dinakaran maintained the lead in all the rounds of counting.
Interestingly, the BJP candidate could only secure less votes than the NOTA, and lost the deposit as well. The bypoll was primarily a contest between Dinakaran and the merged faction of chief minister E Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam.
The death of late CM J Jayalalithaa’s last year necessitated the by-election in RK Nagar. While Dinakaran contested as an Independent candidate, the EPS-OPS faction had fielded Madhusudhanan. The DMK, too, tried to make it a triangular contest, fielding N Maruthu Ganesh.
After the 15th round of counting was finished, Dinakaran declared himself as the “true political heir” of the late J Jayalalithaa after zooming ahead in the by-election to RK Nagar assembly seat in Tamil Nadu. Thanking voters, the sidelined AIADMK leader has vowed to bring down the EPS-OPS government in the state “within three months”. The bypoll was first scheduled to be held in April this year, but was cancelled due to complaints of large-scale voter bribery.
This round of voting was also not devoid of controversy.
A Dinakaran loyalist released a video on the eve of the by-election purportedly showing Jayalalithaa in a hospital few days before her death. TTV Dhinakaran, 54, was pulled out of the cold and handed the reins of the party this February when his aunt, VK Sasikala - headed to a Bengaluru jail to serve her jail term - decided to run the party by remote control.
The 54-year-old leader represented the Periyakulam Lok Sabha constituency in 1999 and was a Rajya Sabha member between 2004 and 2010. But Mr Dinakaran was expelled by Jayalalithaa in 2011 along with other members of Sasikala's extended family often referred to disparagingly as the "Mannargudi mafia", named after their hometown. He remained an outcaste even after his aunt returned to Ms Jayalalithaa's home. But in the weeks after her death last December, the oldest son of Sasikala's sister made his way back and took over as the party's deputy general secretary.
But he was able to hold on to the job for as long as the two factions of the AIADMK led by O Panneerselvam and O Palaniswami stayed apart. He was even the Palaniswami faction's candidate from the RK Nagar seat in April this year that got cancelled after the election commission found evidence that the voters were being bribed on a large scale.
By the time the by-polls to RK Nagar had to be held again, the two factions merged and booted out Dhinakaran who, after unsuccessful attempts to get hold of the AIADMK's 'two leaves' symbol has had to settle for the cooker as his election symbol.
Apart from a case registered by Delhi Police for trying to bribe election commission officials, Dhinakaran is also reported to be facing two 20-year-old FERA cases for acquiring foreign exchange from unauthorised dealers.
With inputs from agencies
