DMK romps home in Coimbatore

To have its first woman mayor

The DMK that had fewer than a dozen councillors in the last Corporation council and zero victory in the 10 Assembly constituencies in the district in the 2021 Assembly elections showed a spectacular performance in the 2022 urban local bodies polls in the city.

At the end of the counting process, the party had won 72 out of 100 wards and helped its allies as well. The Secular Progressive Alliance tally stood at 92 wards with Congress getting nine, the two Left parties four each and MDMK three.

The DMK had managed to confine the AIADMK to three seats, almost half of its strength in the last elected Council of 2011-16. An SDPI candidate, treated as Independent, won a ward.

The DMK’s victory is not only impressive in the number of wards it has won, but also extends to the way it has polled votes in those wards as well. A cursory look at the votes the party has polled in wards it won showed that its candidates polled twice or more than twice the number of votes polled by the AIADMK or the BJP.

In Ward 45, for instance, DMK candidate Baby Sudha polled 7,844 votes to defeat AIADMK’s Meherbanu, who polled 1,436 votes. In Ward 46, DMK’s Meena Logu polled 7,102 votes to defeat AIADMK’s Senthilvel who got 1,473 votes.

There were only a few wards where the tally of the votes polled by the AIADMK and the BJP or another candidate surpassed the DMK’s.

The DMK performance sealed the mayorship in its favour as the party on its own had more than the 50 seats required. And, this will be the first time that it will have its mayor in Coimbatore.