The campaign for the December 21 byelection to the Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar Assembly constituency wound up on Tuesday evening, with the AIADMK, DMK and Independent candidate T.T.V. Dhinakaran declaring that they were confident of victory.
Tuesday’s campaign, which brought traffic to a standstill — not just in the constituency, but all of North Chennai — was deprived of some of its prominent faces, thanks to Narendra Modi.
His visit to the cyclone-affected areas of Kaniyakumari meant that Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, his deputy O. Panneerselvam and BJP’s State president Tamilisai Soundararajan had to absent themselves from R.K. Nagar. There were so many people on the road, attending meetings or watching them that the CPI(M), which has been campaigning on its own for the DMK candidate, decided not to even schedule a campaign event. “We thought about continuing our door-to-door meeting but decided that it was futile since few people were home anyway,” said R. Loganathan, the CPI-(M)’s candidate in the cancelled byelection of April.
The traffic snarls were not the only similarity with the campaign of the cancelled byelection earlier this year: there were widespread allegations that money had been distributed for votes. While DMK and the BJP declared that it was ₹ 6,000 per voter, Mr. Dhinakaran mentioned ₹120 crore, calculated as the total intended for two lakh voters.
Covering the last mile
The AIADMK’s Ministers fanned out in the constituency; Dindigul C. Sreenivasan predicted a victory margin of 75,000 for party candidate E. Madhusudhanan.
DMK’s working president M.K. Stalin, who had campaigned from 4-9 p.m. over the past two days for candidate N. Maruthu Ganesh, started his campaign at 9 a.m.on Tuesday and after four sessions, closed it just before 5 p.m.
Independent candidate T.T.V. Dhinakaran travelled through Kasimedu for the last leg.The large gathering for Mr. Dhinakaran’s meeting at the Kasimedu signal brought traffic to a standstill for over an hour.
The BJP took out a bike rally from near the Korukkupet railway station.
