Tamil Nadu Lok Sabha election: DMK’s winning streak in western region continues

COIMBATORE: The DMK continued its winning streak in western Tamil Nadu, considered to be a traditional stronghold of AIADMK, by making a clean sweep in line with the mood of voters across Tamil Nadu.

Barring Dharmapuri, where PMK’s Sowmiya Anbumani maintained a steady lead in votes, before losing to DMK’s A Mani, all other seats in Western districts went in favour of the ruling party even from the initial rounds.

Indeed, the DMK made a clean sweep with a comfortable vote margin in most of the constituencies in this part of the State.

The AIADMK, contested in all nine constituencies in the Western region -- Krishnagiri, Salem, Namakkal, Erode, Tirupur, Pollachi, Dharmapuri, Nilgiris and Coimbatore hoping to win a few seats, as several sitting MLAs were from the kongu region.

If scoring a blank was a shock to the AIADMK, what came as a humiliation to its leadership is that the party was pushed to the third spot behind BJP in some of the crucial constituencies like Coimbatore, Dharmapuri and Nilgiris Lok Sabha seats.

Perhaps, in Coimbatore Lok Sabha constituency, where all Assembly seats -- Coimbatore South, Coimbatore North, Kavundampalayam, Singanallur and Sulur in Coimbatore and Palladam in Tirupur are in the kitty of AIADMK, the crushing defeat came as a rude shock to the opposition party.

“The DMK’s successive clean sweep in the Lok Sabha polls in the Western region and across Tamil Nadu has proved the voters' faith in the leadership of Chief Minister MK Stalin,” said a DMK functionary in Coimbatore.

With BJP State president K Annamalai entering the Lok Sabha poll fray from Coimbatore, both the DMK and AIADMK focused all their energy on this industrial city.

The BJP’s renewed interest and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign also raised the heat in this region.

Finally, DMK’s Ganapathy P Rajkumar won by a margin of over one lakh votes defeating Annamalai and AIADMK candidate Singai G Ramachandran.

Nevertheless, it’s a crucial win for DMK, as the ruling party is tasting victory in Coimbatore after 28 years.

A DMK candidate won last in 1996, after which, the seat was mostly contested by its alliance parties.

Similarly, the DMK candidate A Raja won the Nilgiris Lok Sabha constituency for the third time with a considerable victory margin of around 2.25 lakh votes by defeating BJPs L Murugan and AIADMK’s D Lokesh Tamilselvan, son of former AIADMK speaker P Dhanabal. In the last Lok Sabha polls, A Raja won by a margin of 2.05 lakh votes.