Chennai: Congress leader and DMK-led Secular Progressive Front candidate E.V.K.S. Elangovan received a massive lead in the Erode East by-elections on Thursday. The Congress leader also got majority of votes in the postal votes.
At the end of two rounds of counting, E.V.K.S. Elangovan was leading with a difference of over 7,000 votes against AIADMK candidate K.S. Thennarasu.
However, there was a delay at the beginning of the third round of vote counting after a protest by AIADMK. The AIADMK members reportedly staged a protest since an EVM had nil votes cast for AIADMK.
After a delay of half an hour, the district Election Commissioner and police tried to pacify the protesters and started the counting of votes.
The DMK and Congress party members burst into celebration after the leads in early trends.
It may be noted that of the 2.27 lakh voters in the constituency, 1.70 lakh cast their votes taking the polling percentage to 74.79 per cent.
The by-election was necessitated after the death of the sitting MLA E. Thirumahan Everaa of the Congress who died due to a cardiac arrest on January 4. The deceased legislator's father and senior Congress leader, Elangovan is contesting the polls as the Congress candidate.
In the 2021 Assembly elections, E. Thirumahan Everaa of the Congress defeated the Tamil Manila Congress (TMC) candidate, M. Yuvraj by a margin of 8904 votes. In this election, the Makkal Needhi Maiam(MNM) of super star Kamal Haasan has also extended support to the DMK front.
A total of 77 candidates are contesting in the bypolls which include Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) and Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) candidates Megna Navaneethan and S. Anand.
(With IANS inputs)