Tamil Nadu LS poll results | By a margin: Sasikanth Senthil’s gain and Sowmiya Anbumani's loss

CHENNAI: Among the 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu where election was held in 2024, the candidate who won with the highest margin was a Congress candidate, that too a debutant. Incidentally, the one that scraped through the lowest margin too was a Congress nominee, this time a two-time parliamentarian who struggled against another greenhorn.

First, let’s take a look at the top three winners with the highest margin.

On top of the list is Congress war room strategist Sasikanth Senthil, a Karnataka cadre IAS officer who quit the service to join active politics. He shot to national prominence after his team helped chart the return of the Congress government in Karnataka in the recent election.

The party fielded him from Tiruvallur, where he was up against Balaganapathy of the BJP and Nallathambi K of the DMDK, which contested the election as part of the AIADMK-led alliance. Despite Sasikanth being a debutant in electoral politics and a recent entrant to politics as such, the only tight contest on June 4, the day of the counting of votes, was between the BJP and the DMDK candidate for the second position.

In the end, Sasikanth trounced his Saffron rival by a whopping margin of 5,72,155 votes.

Final result: Sasikanth Senthil (Congress) - 7,96,956 votes; Balaganapathy (BJP) - 2,24,801 votes; Nallathambi K (DMDK) - 2,23,904 votes; and Jagadesh Chander M (NTK) -1,20,838 votes.

Unlike Sasikanth, the candidate who came second is one of the most experienced candidates in the fray, TR Baalu of the DMK. The former union minister and the party’s leader in Lok Sabha contested from Sriperumbudur for yet another time. Baalu won by 4,87,029 votes.

Final result: TR Baalu (DMK) - 7,58,611 votes; G Premkumar (AIADMK) - 2,71,582 votes; VN Venugopal - 2,10,110 votes; and V Ravi Chandran (NTK) – 1,40,233 votes.

Closely following Baalu in terms of margin of victory is R Sachithanantham of the CPM who won from the Dindigul constituency with a margin of 4,43,821 votes, defeating Mohamed Mubarak MA of the AIADMK.

Final result: R Sachithanantham (CPM) - 6,70,149 votes; Mohamed Mubarak MA (AIADMK) - 2,26,328 votes; M Thilagabama (PMK) - 1,12,503 votes; and Kailai Rajan D (NTK) - 97,845 votes.

Now, let us look at the three candidates with the lowest margins.

The lowest was Manickam Tagore of the Congress, the two-time MP of Virudhunagar, who had to sweat it out to finally bag a hard-earned entry. His closest rival was a debutant but with a legacy – DMDK founder late ‘Captain’ Vijayakanth’s elder son V Vijaya Prabhakaran. The youngster led in multiple rounds, especially in the initial time, but Tagore won by a margin of 4,379 votes, the narrowest margins in the Lok Sabha election in Tamil Nadu.

Final result: Manickam Tagore B (Congress) - 3,85,256 votes; V Vijaya Prabhakaran (DMDK) - 3,80,877; Radikaa R (BJP) - 1,66,271 votes; and Kaushik S (NTK) - 77,031.

Another close fight was in Dharmapuri, where PMK’s Sowmiya Anbumani tried to reclaim the seat that her husband, party president Anbumani Ramadoss, won in 2014. Though she was in front till the half-way mark, giving an impression that the NDA would win a seat in Tamil Nadu, DMK candidate A Mani inched his way back to emerge victorious by a margin of 21,300 votes.

Final result: A Mani (DMK) - 4,32,667 votes; Sowmiya Anbumani (PMK) - 4,11,367 votes; Dr R Asokan (AIADMK) - 2,93,629 votes; and Abinaya (NTK) - 65,381 votes.

Despite the presence of former DMK leader and minister KP Ramalingam who joined the BJP after being expelled from the Dravidian party, the Namakkal constituency did not have the same high profile as the others in the list. But the contest went to the wire and was won by DMK’s VS Matheswaran by 29,112 votes. As Matheswaran and AIADMK’s S Tamilmani slugged it out, Ramalingam was reduced to an also-ran, barely managing to garner more than one lakh votes – less than 10,000 votes more than the NTK candidate.

Final result: VS Matheswaran (DMK) - 4,62,036 votes; S Tamilmani - 4,32,924 votes; KP Ramalingam (BJP) - 1,04,690 votes; and G Kanimozhi (NTK) - 95,577 votes.