Ashok Anand holds Thattanchavady for AINRC by 8,482 votes on an 80.81 percent turnout

Ashok Anand of the All India N.R. Congress won the Thattanchavady by-election on Friday by 8,482 votes. He polled 13,358. Congress candidate E. Vinayagam polled 4,876. DMK candidate K. Sethuselvam finished third with 2,664. The seat is one of two that Chief Minister N. Rangasamy won in the April assembly election. He resigned Thattanchavady and kept Mangalam, which is why the by-election was held on 6 October and counted on 9 October.

Turnout, and how it compares with April

The constituency has 26,921 voters: 12,575 men, 14,341 women and five transgender voters. Of those, 21,756 cast a ballot, a turnout of 80.81 percent. The split was 10,056 men, 11,695 women and all five transgender voters. April's assembly election on the same seat had recorded 87.2 percent. Friday's figure is 6.39 points lower. A drop of that size on a seat the chief minister has just vacated is the local fact. It is still a high turnout by national by-election standards. It is not the April number.

Anand's 13,358 votes are about 61 percent of the ballots cast. Vinayagam's 4,876 are about 22 percent. Sethuselvam's 2,664 are about 12 percent. The rest sat with other candidates and with rejected papers the returning officer has not itemised in the first reports. A three-way split this wide, on a seat the ruling party already held, is a hold rather than a swing. The margin of 8,482 is larger than the entire DMK vote.

Why this seat was the one resigned

Rangasamy won both Thattanchavady and Mangalam in April and had to give one up. Keeping Mangalam and offering Thattanchavady to a party colleague is a standard double-seat choice. Anand, standing for AINRC inside the NDA arrangement that governs Puducherry, was the beneficiary. The Congress and the DMK fought each other for second. Their combined 7,540 votes would still have left them short of Anand if every one of those ballots had moved to a single opponent. They did not move. They split.

The count sits with five other by-elections decided the same day. In Assam, Devashish Sharma took the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat. In West Bengal the BJP held Nandigram and won Rejinagar. In Tamil Nadu, TVK won both Madurantakam and Dharapuram. Thattanchavady is the smallest of the six electorates and the one whose vacancy was created by a sitting chief minister. The result keeps the seat with the party that holds the assembly majority.

The filing that remains

Anand showed the ink mark on his finger on polling day. The result on Friday makes him the member-elect. The next formal step is the return and the oath in the assembly. Nothing in the count suggests a recount: the gap is more than 8,000 votes on a roll of under 27,000. The number worth keeping beside the margin is the turnout gap with April, 6.39 points, on a seat the chief minister chose not to keep.