Chennai: The DMK in the Lok Sabha polls lost all the three parliamentary seats in Chennai, but held on to the three assembly constituencies.
Chepauk-Triplicane, Kolathur and Harbour, the strongholds of DMK president M. Karunanidhi, DMK general secretary Anbhazagan and party treasurer M.K. Stalin, gave the ruling AIADMK a margin of less than 1,500 additional votes in total, even as the slum pockets voted out the DMK in Chennai.
Of the 18 assembly constituencies in Chennai, the AIADMK emerged victorious in all but these three, said sources with the Chennai district election office. If this trend is repeated in the assembly polls in 2016, the DMK could be left without any MLA in the city, sources said.
In Kolathur constituency, where Stalin is the MLA, the DMK had done better compared to other MLA seats. In Kolathur, the margin between the AIADMK and DMK was 215 votes, both securing close to 60,000 votes. In Chepauk, where the DMK retained the seat in eight out of the last nine assembly elections, the margin was only 464 votes, with the AIADMK and DMK securing 56,062 and 56,526 votes respectively.
“Early trends showed that the DMK and AIADMK candidates in Central and South Chennai were close, but when the EVM machines from slum pockets were counted, it was the AIADMK that benefited. Pockets like Aminjikarai, Anna Nagar, Pulianthope, Perambur and R.K. Nagar made the change, forcing the DMK to face a rout in the polls,” according to a senior AIADMK legislator.
