AIADMK wins almost all seats in Coimbatore

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam won nine of the 10 Assembly constituencies in the Coimbatore district. The 2016 Assembly election victory has helped the party to improve upon its 2011 performance by a seat.

The only seat the party lost was the Singanallur Assembly constituency, where the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s N. Karthi, former Deputy Mayor, won by 5,180 votes.

In eight Assembly seats, except Mettupalayam and Valparai, the Bharatiya Janata Party scored more than the six-party DMDK-PWA-TMC alliance.

Of the nine AIADMK candidates who won this time, three are incumbents – O.K. Chinnaraj has retained Mettupalayam seat, S.P. Velumani Thondamuthur and V.C. Arukutty Kavundampalayam. Among the three, Mr. Velumani won by the highest victory margin of 64,048 votes.

‘Ettimadai’ Shanmugam of the AIADMK won the Kinathukadavu seat by the lowest margin – 1,332 votes.

Right from the start of the counting at the Government College of Technology, tense moments prevailed – for both the candidates and those seeking to keep a tab on results as information trickled in at snail’s pace. After three or four rounds, lead margin begun to swing between the AIADMK and DMK in the Coimbatore North, Singanallur and Kinathukadavu Assembly constituencies.

In North, DMK’s Meena Logu had established a lead but not enough for AIADMK’s P.R.G. Arunkumar to surpass. After the eighth or ninth rounds, the latter established formidable lead. AIADMK’s resounding victory in the Coimbatore district, part of the Kongu belt, has left the Congress, which contested two seats, BJP, which contested all the 10, and the six-party DMDK-PWA-TMC alliance without a seat. In fact, in the previous Assembly, the DMDK and the CPI (a part of the PWA) had a seat each.

Commenting on the victory, Mr. Velumani, who is the Coimbatore urban district secretary of the party, said that the victory was party chief Jayalalithaa’s and that the people had accepted her policies in the last five years.

She had made Tamil Nadu a power surplus State and helped industries come back from brink. In the next five years, the Coimbatore district would see more development than what it had seen in the past.

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