By IANS,
Chennai : Voting in the by-election from the Pudukottai constituency to the Tamil Nadu assembly is progressing peacefully and around 60 percent votes have been cast, according to the last reports received here, said an official Tuesday.
“As per the last report from Pudukottai, around 60 percent of the total electorate have voted,” an Election Commission official told IANS.
According to officials, voting began at 8 a.m. and has been peaceful with no untoward incident being reported.
The Pudukottai constituency has 224 polling booths and over 190,000 voters.
The by-election in Pudukottai, 350 km from here, was necessitated following the death of Communist Party of India (CPI) legislator S.P. Muthukumaran in a road accident in April.
It would be a straight fight between the ruling AIADMK and the DMDK, with the DMK and others boycotting the polls.
The DMK has alleged that the opposition parties will not get justice from the Election Commission.
The CPI decided not to contest the poll considering its practical weakness in facing the by-poll.
The two major choices before the Pudukottai voters are the ruling AIADMK candidate Karthik Thondaiman and the opposition party DMDK’s N. Jahir Hussain.
Currently in the 235-member Tamil Nadu assembly, the AIADMK has 150 members (including the speaker) followed by the DMDK’s 29, the DMK’s 23, the Communist Party of India-Marxist’s 10, the CPI’s eight, the Congress’s five and the PMK’s three, among others.