"DMK won by bribing voters, PMK won without spending any single penny": Anbumani Ramados on Tamil Nadu by-polls - World News Network

Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], July 13 (ANI): Anbumani Ramados, Rajya Sabha MP and Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) President, on Saturday accused DMK of winning the by-election in Tamil Nadu’s Vikravandi by “murdering democracy”.
As DMK won Vikravandi Assembly seat in bypolls, PMK President Dr Anbumani Ramadoss said, “What happened in Vikravandi bypolls is a murder of democracy. The democracy has been murdered again. PMK got respectful 56,300 votes.”
Anniyur Siva of DMK secured a win against Anbumani. C of PMK by a vote margin of 67,757. Siva secured 1,24,053 votes while Anbumani garnered 56,296 votes.
Speaking with ANI, Ramados said, “Even though DMK won by bribing voters, PMK won without spending any single penny, and we had got a respectable vote count.”
“It was completely a mockery of democracy. The entire world knows what exactly is happening there… It is a bypoll, and Tamil Nadu is known for it, where you buy votes. In Tamil Nadu, you buy your votes unlike anywhere else in India. So this won’t be the trend for the assembly elections,” he added.
He added further, “I would like to thank the voters, who expressed faith in us, and in a bye-election in Tamil Nadu, I see this as a huge amount. In the last bye-election, the DMK and BJP together got only 43,000 votes.”
Stepping up his attacks on DMK, Ramados said, “The DMK bribed the voters with nearly Rs 10,000 and they also gave saris, earrings and other things worth Rs 4000. DMK need not be proud of itself by winning elections in this way by murdering democracy, law and order…”
The PMK president also criticised the Election Commission of India and said that the party for the past 20 days, had been complaining to ECI in Tamil Nadu that DMK has been distributing money, alcohol and other things but not a single action was taken against anyone.
Ramados spoke about the Vikravandi and said that the constituency is very backward, and the Villupuram district is one of the most backward in the state. “The per capita income of the district is the least in the state and for them, even Rs 500 is a big amount of money. And when they are getting Rs 10,000, they will vote for them only. This is something where I don’t fault the voters but I fault the system, the EC, the DMK… This is a bye-election where DMK bought the votes.”
Notably, the counting of votes for the 13 legislative assembly seats spread across seven states began on Saturday morning. Polling took place on July 10 for the assembly seats in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh.
The Election Commission held the by-elections in one seat of Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Punjab, and Madhya Pradesh, two seats of Uttarakhand, three seats of Himachal Pradesh, and four seats of Uttarakhand.
The constituencies included Vikravandi in Tamil Nadu; Amarwara in Madhya Pradesh; Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda, and Maniktala in West Bengal; Dehra, Hamirpur, and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh; Badrinath and Manglaur in Uttarakhand; Jalandhar West in Punjab; and Rupauli in Bihar. (ANI)

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