Tenkasi Congress MLA Palani Nadar sealed his victory yet again after securing three additional votes during the recounting of postal votes polled during the 2021 Assembly Election on Thursday. After a day-long counting, Palani Nadar secured 373 votes than his opponent from AIADMK. Tenkasi RDO Lavanya said that the winning margin between the two candidates increased from 370 to 373 in the recounting.
According to Times of India, Congress candidate Palani Nadar won the 2021 Assembly Elections by a margin of 370 votes. He secured 89, 315 votes. His opponent from AIADMK Selva Mohandas Pandian secured 88,945 votes.
Following this, Pandian moved Madras High Court demanding a recount of the polled votes. He especially sought the recounting from 28 to 30 rounds in EVM machines.
Recently, Justice Jayachandran passed an order permitting the recounting of postal votes. The court ordered Tenkasi District Collector to recount the postal votes within 10 days.
In 2021, 2,971 postal votes were recorded of which 2,576 votes were deemed valid during counting.
On Thursday, counting started for the Assembly constituency at the RDO office in Tenkasi. The postal votes were brought and candidates of various parties were present at the centre.
Overall, 20 staff from the Election Commission of India were deployed in the counting process. District Election Officer cum district Collector Durai Ravichandran monitored the counting. The counting was largely smooth without any violence.
During the counting, the process was stopped twice over the confusion of declaration forms and the vote. The RDO said that 82 postal votes that were demeed ufit due to the lack of signatures were also counted during this time. As a result, Tenkasi RDO Lavanya told TOI that the winning margin of the candidate increased from 370 to 373 votes with three more additional votes polled by the winning Congress candidate.