Congress's EVKS Elangovan wins Erode East bypoll by 66,000 votes

ERODE: Congress candidate E V K S Elangovan, 75, on Thursday won the high-decibel Erode East bypoll by a margin of 66,233 votes over AIADMK's K S Thennarasu and is set to enter the Tamil Nadu assembly after 34 years.
"The entire credit goes to chief minister M K Stalin. People have voted for DMK's good governance and love for Rahul Gandhi," Elangovan told reporters in Erode.
"This is a huge victory. But I'm not in a state of mind to celebrate. All I want to do is continue the work left by my son," he said. The byelection was held following the death of Elangovan's son E Thirumahan Everaa, who won the seat in 2021. "It was money power, not democracy that helped them win," alleged Thennarasu as he left the counting centre once it became clear that Elangovan was winning.
As the counting came to an end in the evening, district returning officer H Krishnanunni and returning officer R Sivakumar' handed over the winner's certificate to Elangovan.
Elangovan established a clear lead right from the beginning when postal votes were counted. With every round of counting, the difference between votes polled by Elangovan and Thennarasu increased. By noon, Elangovan was far ahead of his opponent. The Congress leader bagged 1,10,156 votes and Thennarasu 43,923 votes.
The other two candidates NTK’s Menaka Navaneethan and DMDK’s S Anand got 10,827 votes and 1,432 votes. NTK candidate Menaka Navaneethan too charged that ‘money power’ and state government machinery helped the Congress candidate win the bypoll. NTK polled fewer votes than it did in the 2021 election in the constituency.
DMDK’s Anand too put up a poor show as he got fewer votes than an independent candidate in the first two rounds. He, however, managed to get more than the independent in the subsequent rounds.
But the NTK and the DMDK candidates forfeited their deposits as they failed to get one-sixth of the total votes polled. Of 77 candidates in the fray, 14 got votes in single digits, 49 candidates in two digits, 10 in three digits, one in four digits, and two in five digits. Elangovan was the only one to get six-digit votes. As many as 797 voters chose NOTA.