By IANS,
Chennai: Contrary to its hopes for victory in 63 seats, the Congress in Tamil Nadu won just five seats in the assembly elections and only three of its 34 legislators were able to retain seats.
The party’s youth brigade too did not fare well despite the youth wing claiming to have a membership of over a million in the state.
Leading the losers’ list is state Congress Chief K.V. Thangkabalu, who was humbled in Mylapore seat by AIADMK’s R. Rajalakshmi by a margin of 29,204 votes.
Several leading lights of the party like deputy leader of the Congress legislature party D. Yashoda, Peter Alphonse and C. Gnanasekaran lost their seats.
During the seat sharing negotiations the party was adamant on getting 63 seats, which incensed the alliance leader DMK to threaten a pull-out of its nominees in the central government.
However, during the run up to the elections, even DMK leaders were expecting the Congress to win in only 10 out of 63 seats.
In the outgoing assembly the Congress has 34 members.
The PMK will be ruing its decision to switch over to the DMK camp as it won only two seats and is leading in one while it has 18 MLAs.
During the Lok Sabha elections the party was aligned with AIADMK.