Emerging trends from the ongoing counting of urban local body elections in Tamil Nadu has shown that the Bhartiya Janata Party is paving its way to establishing a stronghold in the state. Today, the counting for the recently conducted elections for Municipal Corporations, Municipalities and Nagar Panchayats is taking place. In a historic win, the saffron party has won a majority of wards in the Kanyakumari district in TN.
The BJP is seen making serious inroads in Tamil Nadu politics by winning many seats in the urban local body elections. In the Municipal Corporation elections, BJP has managed to bag at least six wards in the Nagercoil corporation and a few wards in Bavanisagar and Sathyamangalam MCs as well. Interestingly in Chennai, the party has come second in some wards in Chennai by displacing the assembly ally AIADMK to the third position.
The BJP has bagged the second position by pushing the AIADMK in at least 5 wards in Chennai. In the 174th ward, While DMK candidate Radhika won by a margin of 4960 votes, the BJP stood in second place with 1847 votes while the AIADMK was in third place bagging only 1403 votes. Also in the 54th ward, the BJP while bagging 1142 votes stood second replacing AIADMK while The DMK candidate was leading with 3,570 votes.
However, the DMK is moving towards a landslide victory in the urban local body elections while leading in almost 150 out of 200 wards in Chennai. As of now, the saffron party has bagged 5 seats in Municipal Corporations, 46 in Municipality elections and 188 in town panchayats. The number is said to increase as the counting of seats is still on. Among the significant victories for the BJP was of Puma Jansree who won ward no. 86 in Madurai and Meena Dev who won ward no. 9 of the Nagercoil corporation. BJYM general secretary for Namakkal district has also grabbed a seat in the Tiruchengode Municipality.
In Virudhunagar East, BJP candidate A. Murugantham has won ward no. 26 in Aruppukkottai municipality whereas Jegathampal has won the 13th ward of the Kilambadi municipality in Erode. Meanwhile, the BJP has won 12 out of 15 wards in the Kanyakumari municipality. The party with an increased vote share is also seen giving a tough time to DMK as an opposition party in alliance with the AIADMK in the Tamil Nadu assembly.