J Jayalalithaa, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, may be the only candidate in the country who spent minimum time for her own election campaign from RK Nagar Assembly constituency near Chennai which goes to poll on Saturday. As the election campaign came to a close on Thursday evening, all the AIADMK leaders and workers who were on a mission mode from day one campaigning for “Amma” (as Jayalalithaa is addressed by party cadre) trooped out of RK Nagar as per the diktat of the Election Commission. No outsiders are allowed in the constituency from 5 pm on Thursday.
Though there are 28 candidates in the fray at RK Nagar, the “contest” if any is between Jayalalithaa and C Mahendran of the CPI. The rest are expected to end up as “also ran” without making any impact. How serious the challengers of Jayalalithaa are could be understood from the fact that more than half of the candidates chose to stay away from the constituency after filing the nomination. K Padmarajan, the independent candidate, filed his nomination and left for home town on the same day not to return to the constituency even once .
True to their style, the CPI candidate Mahendran made some noise here and there. He was focussing more on areas where there are casual workers. Mahendran undertook house-to-house campaign and was also helped by workers of the CPI(M).