Hyderabad: Even as the ruling DMK swept the Chennai Corporation Council elections by winning more than two-thirds of total wards, Uma Anandhan, a BJP candidate and Nathuram Godse sympathiser, has won the Chennai Corporation Council election from an upper-caste dominated area in the city on Tuesday.
She was in the news after her old videos, where she was seen defending Nathuram Godse killing Mahatma Gandhi, went viral. An unfazed Anandhan stood her ground during the electioneering. She reiterated her stand that what Godse did was unto his own right and that she is a 'proud supporter' of Godse.
Anandhan was elected from ward 134 of the civic body. She trounced the DMK-alliance candidate Suseela Gopalakrishnan (of Congress) in West Mambalam. AIADMK, the estranged alliance partner of the saffron party, finished third. The locality is among the few Assembly segments in the City where the saffron party has been securing a sizeable number of votes even when it went alone in 2016. BJP candidate H Raja polled about 19,000 votes in T Nagar which encompasses ward 134.
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Congress leader Lakshmi Ramachandran said "it was a shame that a hate monger has won the ward". Ramachandran said she was more disappointed that Tamil Nadu Congress has "failed to put up a fight for the values that the Father of our Nation stood for". Ramachandran, in a tweet, wrote, "A campaign taking Mahatma Gandhi's message door-to-door would have certainly helped. We owed it to our country. Who is going to take responsibility for this defeat?"
Echoing similar views, Congress MP Karti P Chidambaram wrote, "It’s most disappointing to note this result. It’s an affront to the memory of the Father of the Nation. And it’s a failure of the @INCTamilNadu for which we all are collectively responsible but those “incharge” must take moral responsibility. Will anything change, I wonder?"
However, this is not the first time that a BJP councillor is entering the Chennai Corporation Council as the party had bagged three wards in alliance with the DMK in 2001. It kept its tally open with a single ward of the civic body in 2006. The ruling DMK has swept the state capital's civic body by winning 153 out of 200 wards and its archrival AIADMK registered victory in 15 wards. Congress has won 13 seats, CPI(M) 4 and CPI 1.
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Vaiko's Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam won 2, Thol Thirumavalavan's Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi won 4, VK Sasikala's nephew TTV Dhinakaran's Amma Makkal Munnettra Kazagam, and IUML won one ward each. Five including two women won as independent candidates. The urban local bodies in Tamil Nadu went to polls on February 19 in which 12,604 wards across 21 corporations, 138 municipalities and 489 town panchayats were up for grabs. A total of 57,778 candidates were in the fray across the civic bodies.
