Madurantakam closes near 86 percent as two ex-AIADMK MLAs stand for TVK

Turnout in Tamil Nadu's two Assembly bypolls finished the day at levels that would be high for a general election. By the latest evening count on Tuesday, Madurantakam stood at 85.98 percent and Dharapuram at 80.30 percent. An earlier cut, to 5 pm, had Madurantakam at 83.86 percent and Nandigram in West Bengal at 79.39 percent. Polling ran from 7 am to 6 pm.

The Tamil Nadu seats are vacant because the sitting MLAs resigned from the AIADMK and joined Vijay's TVK. Maragatham Kumaravel quit Madurantakam. P. Sathyabhama quit Dharapuram. Both are contesting the bypolls as TVK candidates. Twenty-seven candidates are on the Madurantakam ballot. Thirty are on the Dharapuram ballot.

Why these two seats are a test

TVK emerged from the Assembly election as the single largest party and is in government. These bypolls are the first time it has had to defend, through new candidates who were until recently in the main opposition party, seats it did not win under its own symbol. Kumaravel and Sathyabhama are asking the same voters who elected them as AIADMK MLAs to return them under a different flag. A high turnout does not say which way that question broke. It says the question was not ignored.

Eighty-six percent in Madurantakam is close to a full roll. Eighty percent in Dharapuram is in the same band. At 11 am the same seats had been at 35.55 percent and, for Dharapuram, 37.28 percent, with Nandigram then leading the morning at 43.95 percent. The day filled in. The morning ranking and the evening ranking are not the same, which is a reason to wait for the official close-of-poll bulletin before treating any one percentage as final.

The other booths open on the same day

Tuesday was not only a Tamil Nadu poll. Assembly bypolls were also held in Nandigram and Rejinagar in West Bengal, and in Thattanchavady in Puducherry. A Lok Sabha bypoll was held in Nagaon in Assam. At 11 am, Rejinagar was at 38.71 percent and Thattanchavady at 39.16 percent. By 5 pm, Nandigram was being reported at 79.39 percent. Final figures for Bengal, Puducherry and Assam were still being compiled as the Tamil Nadu evening numbers circulated.

Nandigram carries its own history as a seat fought at close range in more than one West Bengal cycle. A 79 percent report by 5 pm, with an hour of polling left, puts it in the same high band as the Tamil Nadu seats. It does not make it the same contest. The parties, the reason for the vacancy and the electorate are different. The shared fact is the day.

What the resignation actually did

A sitting MLA who resigns and recontests under a new party forces a bypoll the state would not otherwise have held. Kumaravel and Sathyabhama did that from inside the AIADMK, into TVK, and straight back onto the ballot. The AIADMK has to defend a seat it held, against the person who held it. TVK has to show that a defector can carry a ward that elected someone else. Voters in between have 26 other names in Madurantakam and 29 in Dharapuram, so the choice is not a binary even if the story is told as one.

One polling-station complaint during the day led to the replacement of an officer, Thangamani, by Rajammal. That is a local administrative note, not a result. It is part of the record of how the poll was run.

The figure to wait for

The Election Commission of India's form is the one that will settle the decimals. Until it is out, the working numbers are the evening reports: 85.98 percent in Madurantakam, 80.30 percent in Dharapuram, and 79.39 percent in Nandigram at 5 pm. Counting will say whether the MLAs who changed parties kept the seats. Turnout has already said that most of the roll turned up to answer.