VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan who contested from Kattumannarkoil constituency lost by a thin margin of 87 votes, and this has come as a huge blow to the political party. And there are two possible reasons for the narrow loss – an alleged ‘political conspiracy’ attributed to a namesake in the ballot, and the declaration of some postal votes as invalid on technical grounds.
VCK leaders say that Thirumavalavan lost because an independent candidate, named T.Thirumavalavan, also contested from the reserved constituency and polled a total of 289 votes.
“We suspect that the AIADMK’s winning candidate had a role to play in the independent candidature of the namesake T. Thirumavalavan. The independent candidate contested with the symbol of a bangle, while our symbol is the ring, creating further confusion for several voters,” says D.Ravikumar, General Secretary of VCK, adding that it was a political conspiracy.
While the AIADMK candidate N Muruganandam polled 48,450 votes to register victory in the constituency, 48,363 votes were cast for Thol Thirumavalavan. He would have emerged victorious had the votes polled for the independent candidate been cast for the VCK leader instead.
He also says that the declaring of 102 postal votes of the constituency as null and void due to wrongly placed signatures in the declaration forms cost them dearly. Many of these votes were cast for the VCK, he says.
“The election commission declared 102 postal votes void claiming that the voters had either signed in wrong place in the declaration form or that they had taken the signatures of non-gazetted officers in these forms. These were declaration forms and not the voting ballots,” says Ravikumar.