By IANS,
Chennai : The stage is set for Sunday’s by-poll in the Sankarankoil assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district.
Thirteen candidates, including six independents, are in the fray vying for votes from 206,087 voters (male 102,921, female 103,166) in the district, around 650 km from here.
Voting in the 242 polling booths would begin at 8 a.m. and end at 5 p.m.
The polling process will be monitored by the chief electoral officer using 10 monitors installed in the control room of his office.
It will be a five-cornered contest with the AIADMK, the DMK, the DMDK, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the MDMK being the major parties in the arena.
For the ruling AIADMK in the state, the by-poll is crucial as it is the first election after it parted with its assembly election allies like the DMDK, two communist parties and others and the first poll after the government jacked up the fares of public transport buses and prices of milk.
The by-poll is necessitated by the death of sitting legislator, AIADMK’s C. Karuppasamy, in October 2011 due to ill-health.
The AIADMK has fielded V. Muthuselvi while the DMK and the DMDK have pitted J. Jawahar Suryakumar and K. Muthukumar, respectively, against her.
The MDMK which boycotted the assembly polls last year has fielded T. Sadan Thirumalaikumar while the BJP’s candidate is L. Murugan.
The election result would be out March 21.