Chennai: AIADMK general secretary and chief minister J Jayalalithaa returned to the Tamil Nadu assembly on Tuesday by a record victory margin from the Radkhakrishnan Nagar constituency today. Jayalalithaa won RK Nagar bypoll by a massive margin of over 1.5 lakh votes.
Jayalalithaa polled 160,432 votes while her nearest rival, Communist Party of India’s (CPI) C Mahendran, got just 9,710 votes – a victory margin of 150,722 votes.
The total electorate in the constituency was around 245,000, and the chief minister bagged more than 50% of that.
As noisy celebrations erupted at the AIADMK headquarters and outside Jayalalithaa’s residence, Tamil Nadu governor K Rosaiah congratulated her over her landslide win, an official statement said.
AIADMK activists and leaders generously distributed sweets to all and sundry and burst crackers to celebrate the thumping victory – a record of sorts for Jayalalithaa.
But what worries the cadres and perhaps even Jayalalithaa more is the appeal of the Karnataka government pending in Supreme Court. “For the moment she is unfazed. But one never knows what would unfold at the Supreme Court. Of course, her political future depends on that”, Mani says.
Cadres are hoping that the case would drag till next year when the state would go into Assembly elections. “We will be victorious there too. And there is no challenging Amma the next five years. She will win the case after that,” says a second-rung AIADMK leader but prefers not to elaborate on that. The game might just be in her favour now, but Jayalalithaa might have to wait to see if it will continue to be so till the end.
Bureau Report
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