Congress war room chief Sasikanth Senthil sets record in maiden Lok Sabha battle

CHENNAI: The Congress party erased the blemish of 2019 and retained its 100 per cent strike rate like its allies after a gap of nearly two decades in the Dravidian heartland.

Debutant Sasikanth Senthil, IAS officer-turned-Congress election war room head, set the record for winning by the highest margin in the State. Making his electoral debut in native Tiruvallur, Sasikanth won by a whopping 5,72,155 votes, trouncing BJP’s Pon Balagapanathy and DMDK’s K Nallathambi.

Barring Manickam Tagore in Virudhunagar, who was leading by less than 5,000 votes at the time of going to press, other Congress candidates won by a convincing margin of not less than 1.5 lakh votes.

Incumbent Sivaganga MP Karti P Chidambaram, one of the star candidates in the fray, was also leading by over two lakh votes.

Many time MLA K Gopinath also inched close to twolakh vote margin in Krishnagiri constituency.

AICC general secretary Manickam Tagore, who was credited with the party’s grand victory in Telangana Assembly poll, was trailing for a long time throughout the day in his native Virudhunagar, and that too against greenhorn V Vijayaprabhakaran, the elder son of DMDK founder late Vijayakant, who in turn relegated actor and BJP candidate Radikaa R to a distant third with 1,64,149 votes. Debutante R Sudha, a surprise candidate who walked her along with Rahul Gandhi during his Bharat Jodo Yatra to secure MP ticket, outmuscled

AIADMK’s P Babu by over 2.71 lakh votes in Mayiladuthurai where PMK had to settle for a distant third, about 3.5 lakh vote behind her. Kanniyakumari MP Vijay Vasanth got the better of veteran BJP leader Pon Radhakrishnan in the land’s end, winning the prestigious battle by 1.79 lakh votes.

Sasikanth won by a whopping 5,72,155 votes, trouncing BJP’s Pon Balagapanathy