Besides being a magnificent victory for the DMK in the Tamil Nadu urban local body polls on the scale of seats, the election results have added more significance with the victory of young and transgender candidates that had turned heads. While several young people had won the polls, in some cases with a huge margin, a transgender candidate of the DMK has won a seat in the Vellore district.

49-year-old Ganga Nayak has won the Councillor seat in Vellore and her victory has cast a huge representation of the trans community across the state. The local body polls in the state were held last Saturday and the votes are being counted on Tuesday - February 22. Ganga Nayak was declared the winner of ward 37 in the Vellore Municipal Corporation. She has become the only candidate from the transgender community in Tamil Nadu to have won a seat in the 2022 urban local body polls. 

Ganga has been a DMK member for the last twenty years and she is a social worker based in Vellore. She has also been serving as the Secretary of the South India Transgender Association. According to reports, Ganga has been a familiar face in Vellore as a social worker. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Ganga and her drama troupe had held awareness campaigns across Vellore and other districts such as Ranipet, Kancheepuram, Thiruvallur, and Tiruvannamalai. 

She was born to parents who had worked as daily wage workers in Vellore and her drama troupe has around 50 members, including 30 transgender persons. A total of 15 transgender people had contested in this urban local body poll and many of whom are independents. On the front of the parties, DMK, ADMK, and BJP had also fielded transgender candidates. 

While Ganga Nayak was the DMK candidate, the ADMK had nominated Jayadevi, a transgender candidate to contest from ward 112 in the Teynampet zone of the Greater Chennai Corporation. BJP had fielded transgender candidate Rajamma from ward 76 of the Thiru Vi Ka Nagar zone in Chennai. Tamil Nadu has hosted the urban local body polls last Saturday for the first time in eleven years. 

The polls were held to fill 12,838 seats in 21 municipal corporations, 138 municipalities, and 490 town panchayats. Ever since the counting began on Tuesday, DMK has been leading in more seats across the state. As of 5.30 pm, DMK has been leading in all 21 municipal corporations by securing 988 seats of the 1231 seats that were counted. ADMK has ended up leading in 151 seats and the ruling party has swept the local bodies including in the ADMK's stronghold.