Exactly a day after inking a deal with the ADMK over seat-sharing for the upcoming Tamil Nadu assembly polls, BJP has announced its candidate for a by-poll that will be taking place during the assembly polls. Through announcing the candidate, the BJP has displayed that it is ready for the polls to accomplish its hope of earning representation both in the assembly and in the Parliament from Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu will be going for the crucial assembly polls on April 6 during which the state will also witness the by-poll for the Kanyakumari parliamentary constituency, which became vacant after the demise of Congress MP H Vasanthkumar. The ADMK and BJP had inked a deal on Friday in which the state ruling party had decided to offer 20 assembly seats and Kanyakumari parliamentary seat to BJP. While BJP demanded over 30 seats, the ADMK had eventually convinced the Central ruling party to settle for 20 seats.
A day after sealing the deal, BJP had on Saturday announced the candidate for the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat. The party has on Saturday released a statement in which it has said that it has picked Pon. Radhakrishnan as the candidate for the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat. The 69-year-old leader had served as the BJP Tamil Nadu president and he also had served as the Union Minister of State in Narendra Modi's first term.
Radhakrishnan was the party's candidate for the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. He won the election and entered the Parliament as the only BJP candidate from Tamil Nadu. He had served as the Union Minister of State from 2014-2019 and he had again contested in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in the same seat. However, he lost the seat after getting defeated by Congress candidate Vasanthakumar in a margin of 2.60 lakh votes.
Vasanthakumar had passed away in August 2020 due to the COVID-19 complications following which the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat was spelled vacant. The Election Commission of India had recently announced the date for the assembly election in Tamil Nadu and it also has said that Kanyakumari will go for the by-poll to elect its representation in the lower house of the Parliament.
As the BJP had reached a deal with ADMK and got the Lok Sabha seat, the Central ruling party had decided to field Radhakrishnan again for the second time despite getting defeated in the previous election in a huge margin. By announcing the candidate, BJP has displayed that it is ready for the elections. Tamil Nadu will go to the polls on April 6 and the votes will be counted on May 2 during which the winner will be announced.
While BJP had fielded the candidate for the Lok Sabha by-poll without much race, the Congress party is facing a challenge to sign the deal with DMK and the party will likely witness a tussle in winning the ticket for the by-poll. It must be noted that while Vasanthakumar's son Vijay Vasanth is mulling to contest in the by-poll, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram had filed an application before the party's state election committee in which he had said that Priyanka Gandhi must be named as the candidate for the by-poll in Kanyakumari.
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