AIADMK chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa scored a landslide victory today winning by a record margin of over 1.5 lakh votes, as ruling parties won all the six seats where by-elections were held in five states which also included Kerala and Madhya Pradesh.
With her victory a foregone conclusion, Jayalalithaa won the R K Nagar seat in Chennai by a margin of 1,50,722 votes trouncing her nearest CPI rival C Mahendran who forfeited his deposit like other contestants.
In a shot in the arm for the UDF government in Kerala ahead of assembly polls next year, K S Sabarinadhan of Congress won from Aruvikkara in Thiruvananthapuram by a margin of 10,128 votes defeating his nearest CPI-M rival M Vijayakumar of the LDF.
Sabarinadhan, son of former speaker G Karthikeyan, whose death in February necessitated the bypoll, polled 56,448 votes, while Vijayakumar, a former speaker and ex-state minister, bagged 46,320 votes and BJP candidate and former Union Minister O Rajagopal got 34,145 votes in the fierce triangular contest.
BJP retained Garoth Assembly seat in MP's Mandsaur district albeit with a reduced margin than in the 2013 Assembly polls.
Chander Singh Sisodia defeated Congress' Subhash Kumar Sojatia with a margin of 12,945 votes, an election officer said. The BJP had earlier won by a margin of 25,755 votes.
The Congress, however, termed BJP's win with a lower margin than earlier as a "moral defeat" for the ruling party.
CPI(M) won both the Pratapgarh (SC) and Surma (SC) assembly seats by a huge margin in Tripura.
Ramu Das defeated his nearest BJP rival Mousami Das by a margin of 17,326 votes in Pratapgarh constituency while Anjan Das beat his nearest BJP rival Asish Das in Surma by a margin of 15,309 votes. Significantly, BJP dislodged the Congress from the second position in both the seats.
In Meghalaya, Congress won the Chokpot seat by a margin of 2,550 votes with its candidate Blubell R Sangma defeating her nearest rival Philipole Marak of National People's Party.
Expressing joy and thanking the electorate for giving her a huge victory, Jayalalithaa said "it is a historic win, I assure that I will tirelessly work to fulfill the voters' expectations, and needs."
Out of the total votes polled in the city constituency, a massive 88.43 per cent of the electorate had voted "for me which is historic," she said.
Jayalalithaa had to fulfil the constitutional requirement of getting elected as MLA within six months of becoming Chief Minister. AIADMK's P Vetrivel had vacated the seat to enable her to seek re-election.
She returned to the top post on May 23 after being acquitted in a disproportionate assets case by the Karnataka High Court.
The poll outcome in Kerala is a big relief for the four-year-old UDF government as the opposition had used every opportunity to corner the government on the solar and bar bribery scams.
Attacking the CPI(M), a beaming Chief Minister Oomen Chandy Chandy said the party had insulted the electorate by alleging that the UDF had earned the victory by splurging money earned through corrupt deals and liqour.
