Jayalalitha retains power in Tamil Nadu
Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK today clearly headed to retain power in Tamil Nadu by winning 134 seats as arch rival DMK gave a strong fight bagging 89 segments.
• Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, set to create history by becoming the first ever leader to retain power in the state since 1989, as she retains R K Nagar constituency defeating DMK rival by 39,545 votes.
• Jayalalithaa secured 97,218 votes against Shimla Muthuchozhan who polled 57,673 votes.
• Addressing jubilant party workers, Jayalalithaa called the victory a historic one and vowed to strive for the people with renewed vigour.
• The bad news for the AIADMK came from Chennai, which was battered by flash floods in December and whose voters appeared to have overwhelmingly turned against the ruling party.
• AIADMK candidates trailed behind the DMK in 10 of the 16 constituencies in the capital.
• For the first time, the elections saw several alternatives to AIADMK and DMK. But all drew blank at the polls.
• A total of 2,873 voters in the high profile Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency, where Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa was a contestant, preferred NOTA.
• Tamil Nadu, with over 5.79 crore registered voters, had recorded 74.26 percent polling in the assembly polls held on May 16.
• Tamil Nadu is the eleventh-largest state in India by area and the sixth-most populous.
• The state was ranked sixth among states in India according to the Human Development Index in 2011, with the second-largest state economy.
• Its official language is Tamil, which is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world.