The newly-appointed president of Tamil Nadu BJP Tamilisai Soundarrajan suffered a major setback with most of her party candidates for the September 18 bypolls to local bodies withdrawing from the race which helped the ruling AIADMK to win the mayorship of Tirunelveli and municipal chairmanship of three municipalities in the State.
In Tirunelveli, the BJP candidate Vellaiyammal went to the returning officer’s cabin on Monday morning accompanied by her husband and submitted an application for withdrawing her nomination. Since there was no other candidates in the race other than the AIADMK nominee Bhuvaneswari, the returning officer declared the latter as the winner.
This modus operandi was repeated in most other municipalities, panchayaths and corporation wards spread across the State. A visibly upset Soundararajan told mediapersons that her party nominees were threatened by the ruling AIADMK resulting in their withdrawal from the bypoll.
The bypolls to the Thirunelveli, Coimbatore and Thoothukudi corporations were necessitated following the election of the incumbent mayors as Rajya Sabha and lok Sabha members. Mayoral elections to Thoothukudi and Coimbatore corporations are scheduled for September 18. J Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK general secretary who is also the chief minister, is campaigning for the party candidates later this week.
There were reports from various other districts in the State about BJP nominees for the bypolls going missing and getting assaulted by activists belonging to the AIADMK. The DMK, troubled by fighting within the party is not contesting the bypoll.
For the AIADMK’s local leadership, it is a do or die battle as any setback in the election would end up in persons in charge of the poll getting the marching orders from party supremo Jayalalithaa. Amma, as she is popularly known, has made it clear to the party cadre that her next target is a complete sweep of the 2016 assembly election. The fact that senior ministers themselves have been entrusted with the responsibility of campaigning speaks about the importance Jayalalithaa has given to the bypolls. All opposition parties other than the DMK, Congress , the lefts and the Islamic parties had declared their support to the BJP nominees in the election.