Erode East Bypoll Result 2023 Live Updates: Congress candidate Elangova wins by margin of 66,000 votes

Officials once again recounted the votes for recruitment for reconfirmation.

The election to the Erode East Assembly was necessitated following the passing away of the Congress legislator E. Thirumahan Everaa, son of former Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president E V K S Elangovan, who passed away on January 4 due to a sudden illness.

All arrangements are in place to count votes on March 2 for the bypoll held to Erode East assembly constituency. The vote counting exercise is set to begin at 8am and expected to be completed before 5pm. District Election Officer and District Collector H Krishnanunni said all arrangements have been made for counting of votes. The bypoll, termed by DMK President and Chief Minister M K Stalin as 'Edai podum therthal,' a byelection to weigh all the good work completed within 22 months after he took over the reins of power, is expected to be a test of the government's popularity and set the mood for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

So brazen were the violations that political observers are aghast at the extent of electoral corruption in the runup to the bypoll. If the 2009 ‘Thirumangalam formula’ (when the DMK was accused of deploying a large number of its senior leaders in the bypoll and bribing voters) became the infamous benchmark for voter bribing in Tamil Nadu, the token system to bribe voters adopted by T T V Dhinakaran in RK Nagar in 2017 took electoral corruption to a new level.

The AIADMK’s Edappadi K Palaniswami is buoyed that he managed to get the two leaves symbol. And the voters of Erode are merry because they hit the jackpot with a seemingly never-ending array of gifts from every party in the race. The only casualty in the bypoll appears to be democratic principles.

The byelection for the Erode East assembly constituency recorded a 74. 79% turnout of voters on Monday, the highest since the 2011 assembly elections.Out of 2. 27 lakh voters in the constituency, 82,138 men, 88,037 women and 17 transgenders cast their votes in the incident-free polling. But for minor hiccups, voting for the fiercely fought byelection was peaceful.