Coimbatore: DMK members at Kottaimedu in Coimbatore city celebrated the party’s 40-40 clean sweep in the Lok Sabha elections with a feast of mutton biryani. In the afternoon, party’s Coimbatore urban district secretary N Karthik added fireworks and sweets to the festivities at Gandhipuram as their candidate for Coimbatore LS seat Ganapathy P Rajkumar triumphed over the BJP’s K Annamalai.
Meanwhile, the offices of the BJP and AIADMK wore a sombre look.Only a handful of AIADMK cadres gathered at the party office, Idhaya Deivam Maligai, in the city to watch the results. “We are not worried about our defeat, but happy Annamalai was defeated,” said an AIADMK cadre. “Annamalai had claimed the AIADMK would vanish after this election. But who is destroyed now? Annamalai’s defeat is our victory. We expected to win four to five seats. The DMK won because of the ₹1,000 monthly dole to women and free bus travel for them.” Though cadres gathered at the party office and waited for him, Annamalai was a no-show. Not just at the office but at the counting centre too. Dejected, most cadres left the office by 1pm, seeing no chance of victory.
Though the BJP alliance won a majority of seats nationally , cadres were not in the mood to celebrate. “We expected Annamalai, Nainar Nagendran, T T V Dhinakaran and Sowmya Anbumani to win,” said a BJP worker. “We were disappointed that they all lost. At the national level, most exit polls predicted more than 350 seats for the BJP but it has not been reflected in the results. We thought the people of Coimbatore would vote for change. Money distribution and a strong alliance may have contributed to the DMK’s victory in Coimbatore.”
