Dhinakaran trailing in Kovilpatti in Tamil Nadu

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)’s Kadambur Raju was leading by a thin margin of 1,079 votes against TTV Dhinakaran, the leader of the breakaway faction of his party, in Tamil Nadu’s Kovilpatti constituency. TTV Dhinakaran formed Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) after he was expelled from AIADMK along with his aunt, V K Sasikala.

At the end of round eight of the counting, Raju, who is also a minister, had polled 22,769 votes while Dhinkaran 21,690. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)’s ally, K Srinivasan, of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who has worked in Kovilpatti for over 40 years and is a two-time councillor, polled 8604 votes. Raju won the seat in the 2016 assembly election by a wafer-thin margin of 428 votes.

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Kovilpatti has been under the spotlight since Dhinakaran chose the constituency over Chennai’s RK Nagar seat, which he won as an independent following AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa’s death in 2016.

Caste plays a factor in the constituency, where Raju and Srinivasan belong to the Naicker community. Dhinakaran has the support of the Mukkulathors, a sub-caste of the Thevar community.

AMMK began working on the ground in Kovilpatti long before his candidature was announced. It was initially preparing local AMMK leader SVSP Manickaraja to contest the election there.

In 1999, Dhinakaran won the Periyakulam Lok Sabha constituency from the southern Tamil Nadu district of Theni. In 2017, he won the RK Nagar by-poll surpassing Jayalalithaa’s margin in 2016. He became the first independent candidate to win an assembly by-poll after the election was rescinded twice over charges of cash distribution among voters. Dhinakaran could not recreate his magic after he floated the AMMK in 2018 with a breakaway faction of Sasikala’s supporters. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, AMMK did not win even a single seat but got a 5% vote share eating into the vote base of the AIADMK.