Virudhunagar cliffhanger: Captain Vijayakanth's son Vijaya Prabhakaran makes Rahul Gandhi's aide sweat for victory

MADURAI: Counting in Virudhunagar witnessed a tough tug of war between Congress veteran and a debutant. Finally, Congress candidate B Manickam Tagore was declared winner with 3,85,256 votes.

The seesaw battle started with V Vijaya Prabhakaran, son of the late DMDK founder Vijayakanth, opening with a slender lead. The thrilling rise and fall in fortunes of the candidates kept the counting interesting until 24 rounds of counting.

Vijaya Prabhakaran, who made his debut in the 2024 polls, initially gave Manickam Tagore of the Congress, the two-time MP who contested for the fourth consecutive term from Virudhunagar, a tough time.

Prabhakaran maintained a steady lead with a margin of around 7,000 votes to the maximum. However, in the subsequent rounds of counting, it came down to a thin margin for Prabhakaran even after the ninth round. Again, the margin picked up at around 1.30 pm when the eleventh round was over.

In the following rounds, the vote margin narrowed down and widened later on. During the 16th round, Prabhakaran with over three lakh votes to his credit, trailed just by 2,200 votes behind Tagore. Finally, Tagore got the better of Prabakaran after having garnered 3,85,256 votes.

After 24 rounds of counting, Prabakaran managed 3,80, 877 votes and lost to Tagore by a slender margin of 4,379 votes at the end.

The other debutant, actor R Radhikaa of BJP, managed to poll 1,66, 271votes and came next to Prabhakaran. A total of 9,256 chose NOTA, sources said.