Two Leaves vs Lotus: Clash for supremacy among former allies in 19 Lok Sabha seats

Despite drawing a blank in Tamil Nadu where the DMK-led front swept the 2024 Lok Sabha election, former allies the AIADMK and the BJP that parted ways before the election, had a fiery contest against each other to prove their supremacy.

For this analysis, only the 19 seats where the AIADMK and the BJP locked horns this time have been considered. Of them, the AIADMK surpassed the BJP in 12, and the latter in seven. In 13 of these seats, either the AIADMK or the BJP lost deposits. The margin between the two parties exceeded two lakh in seven seats, and was less than one lakh in eight of them.

Big win in Namakkal

Hoping to put up a tough fight in Namakkal, the BJP fielded K.P. Ramalingam, who was once with the AIADMK as well as the DMK. However, the AIADMK candidate secured about 3.28 lakh votes more than Mr. Ramalingam. Another constituency where the vote difference between the parties was over three lakh was Kanniyakumari where BJP leader Pon. Radhakrishnan pushed the AIADMK to the fourth spot. The AIADMK got only 41,393 votes in the seat.

The AIADMK also faced a setback in Tirunelveli where it secured only 89,601 votes. The BJP’s Nainar Nagenthran, a well-known personality, got about 2.47 lakh votes more than the AIADMK candidate. Congress’s candidate, Robert Bruce, won the seat.

In Coimbatore, BJP State president K. Annamalai secured 2.13 lakh votes more than the AIADMK’s Singai. G. Ramachandran. In the 2021 Assembly election, the AIADMK won five out of the six Assembly seats in the Coimbatore Lok Sabha constituency. New Justice Party leader A.C. Shanmugham, who represented the BJP this time in Vellore, overtook the AIADMK by 2.35 lakh votes. Mr. Shanmugham had earlier unsuccessfully contested from the same constituency by representing the AIADMK and the BJP on separate occasions.

In Chennai South, former AIADMK MP J. Jayavardhan lost his deposit. BJP candidate Tamilisai Soundararajan secured 1.18 lakh votes more than him.

There was a tough fight between the two parties in the Nilgiris (SC) and Madurai constituencies where the difference in the number of votes was less than 20,000. Surprisingly, the BJP’s Raama Sreenivasan got more votes than the AIADMK’s P. Saravanan in Madurai. Union Minister of State L. Murugan of the BJP finished ahead of D. Lokesh Tamilselvan of the AIADMK in the Nilgiris (SC) seat.

Representing the AIADMK this time, Puthiya Tamilagam leader K. Krishnasamy, who unsuccessfully contested from Tenkasi (SC) for the seventh consecutive time, polled slightly more than Tamizhaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam president B. John Pandian who contested on the BJP ticket.In Nagapattinam, the only constituency where the BJP was pushed to the fourth spot, the difference in votes between the two parties was nearly 1.53 lakh.