Maragatham Kumaravel romps home in Madurantakam, this time on TVK ticket

Maragatham Kumaravel, two-time AIADMK MLA from Madurantakam (SC), retained her seat, contesting this time on a TVK ticket, as the byelection result was declared on Friday. She defeated her nearest rival, I. Paranthamen of the DMK, by a margin of 20,040 votes. Mr. Paranthamen polled 54,008 votes, followed by S. Kanitha Sampath of the AIADMK with 47,450 votes.

The byelection was necessitated by Ms. Kumaravel’s resignation from the Assembly barely three weeks into her second term. She, along with three other AIADMK MLAs, resigned and joined the ruling TVK. Thereafter, two other AIADMK MLAs had resigned and switched over to the TVK. As counting progressed, Ms. Maragatham built up a gradual lead, working up a margin of at least a thousand votes at the end of every round. Halfway into the process, she already had a lead of well over 11,000 votes never looking back thereafter..

She received he winner’s certificate from Returning Officer K.R. Narendran, Revenue Divisional Officer, Madurantakam, late in the evening. Ms. Maragatham said she quit the AIADMK after she noticed certain elements colluding with the rival DMK after the general election results favoured the TVK. “This goes against the principles the party stood for. So, I left,” she told reporters. She felt the people have given a suitable answer to the “vicious campaign” launched against her by the two Dravidian parties surrounding her resignation.

She said that some of the long standing demands of people of her constituency had been a government Arts and Science college, an industrial park to provide employment opportunities for the youth, a new Taluk office at Acharapakkam, and a government hospital. “My previous term has been as an opposition MLA. This time, I hope I will be able to fulfil these demands,” she added.

As news of her initial lead tricked out, TVK supporters began gathering outside the counting centre at the Integrated Training Institute for Social Empowerment in Aathur village. With whistles in their mouths, the red-and-gold brigade began celebrations early, chanting slogans in support of their ‘thalapathy’ (Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay) and the ‘winning candidate’.

While the crowd kept swelling outside, inside, the counting process was by and large incident free, except for one occasion when opposition counting agents raised concern over a broken seal of an EVM machine. Counting was held up for a few minutes due to the melee inside. In all, there were objections raised over six EVM machines while five others were randomly chosen for VVPAT verification, as per the norms.

Cheguvaradas and K. Vanitha, counting agents for CPI(M) candidate P. Suganthi, said that during the tenth round of counting, the agents noticed a broken seal and missing tags when an EVM machine was brought to table number 7 for counting. When the opposition agents raised objections to it, the EVM was removed from the table. “The officials did not heed our objections, neither did they respond to our queries,” the agents said. Gunasekaran, counting agent for the DMK candidate I. Paranthamen, said: “In response to our objections, the Returning Officer only said that he will let us know later.”

Meanwhile, independent candidate G. Moorthy was forced out of the counting centre twice by the CAPF and Tamil Nadu police. On both occasions, he said he protested against violation of procedures laid by the Election Commission of India by the officials.

Chengalpattu Collector and District Election Officer M. Veerappan clarified that the EVMs had the internal seal put on them by the Presiding Officer of the polling station, though the external seal was missing. Engineers from Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) should have placed the seal, Dr. Veerappan added. In another machine, the close button wasn’t pressed by the Presiding Officer. All the four machines were subjected to VVPAT scrutiny after the counting was completed, he added.

D. Sarathkumar, Minister for Human Resource Management, Pallavaram MLA J. Kamakshi, and Chengalpet MLA S. Thyagarajan accompanied Ms. Kumaravel to the counting centre for receiving the winner’s certificate from the Returning Officer.