May 24, 2019
Coimbatore : The Tamil Nadu western region, considered as the AIADMK bastion crumbled under the anti-Modi sentiments coupled with anti-incumbency in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.
The seven party combination failed to protect the stronghold, thus dropping almost all the Lok Sabha seats on to the lap of Opposition DMK, which has made inroads into the region.
The major losers in and around the region were M Thambidurai, the Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha, PMK youth wing leader, Anbumani Ramadoss, two time BJP MP, C P Radhakrishnan, with margins of nearly two lakh to four lakh votes in the hustings.
Though Chief Minister, Edapadi K Palanisamy campaigned intensively, his home constituency, Salem was wrested by DMK after gap of nearly 35 years.
In Coimbatore, held by AIADMK in the last Lok Sabha, CPIM candidate, P R Natarajan defeated Radhakrishnan by 1.76 lakh votes, while in nearby Tirupur, held by AIADMK, went to CPI’s Subbarayan, who defeated AIADMK’s MSM Anandan by over 93,000 votes..
In Pollachi, the sitting MP, C Mahendran lost to DMK’s Shanmugasundaram by over 1.79 lakh votes.
In Nilgiris Reserved constituency, former union minister, A Raja pulled off a victory over AIADMK’s Thiagarajan by over two lakh votes.
The only solace to the ruling party in the region was it managed to retain Sulur Assembly constituency by beating DMK’s former minister Pongalur N Palanisamy by a margin of over 10,000 votes.
MDMK’s Ganeshmurthy (fought on DMK Symbol) triumphed from Erode constituency defeating AIADMK candidate with a comfortable margin.
Even though AMMK failed to make any impact on the results, Kamal Hassan’s MNM and Naam Tamilar Katchi managed to get more votes in some of the constituencies.