Rangasamy meets LG, stakes claim to form government in Puducherry

NEW DELHI: All India NR Congress (AINRC) founder N Rangasamy on Friday evening met Puducherry Lieutenant Governor Kuniyil Kailashnathan and staked claim to form the government in the Union Territory days after emerging victorious in the recently held assembly polls.

Rangasamy, who has been the longest-serving Chief Minister of Puducherry, presented a letter of support from the legislative assembly members demanding the right to form the government. The letter has been sent for the President's approval.

This comes after Rangasamy was re-elected as the leader of Nationalist Democratic Alliance (NDA) legislature party in Puducherry earlier in the day.

In the same meeting, Puducherry Home Minister A Namassivayam was elected as the deputy leader of the NDA legislature party.

The NDA has managed to successfully retained power in Puducherry, with NR Congress winning 12 seats and BJP four in the 30-member Puducherry assembly. AIADMK won one seat.

DMK won five seats, and Congress got one. TVK, which made a spectacular debut in Tamil Nadu, also opened its account, winning two seats.

Rangasamy got a total of 10,024 votes and won the Thattanchavady assembly constituency on Monday, securing victory by a margin of 4,441 votes following the counting of votes in the union territory (UT).

He resigned as the chief minister of Puducherry to lieutenant governor K Kailashnathan at Lok Bhavan on Thursday.

N Rangasamy is a veteran political leader in Puducherry and has been serving as chief minister of the Union territory since May 2021. He has held the chief minister's post on multiple occasions earlier, first from 2001 to 2008, and again from 2011 to 2016. In 2011, he founded the AINRC after breaking away from the Indian National Congress (INC).

His political journey spans several decades of shifting electoral trends in Puducherry.

In the 1970s, leaders such as V Pethaperumal of the Indian National Congress were influential, while the 1977 elections saw the rise of the Janata Party. During the 1980s and 1990s, parties like the Janata Dal played a role, and Rangasamy himself emerged as an INC representative by 1991.

The political scene continued to evolve through the 1996, 2001, and 2006 elections. In 2011, AINRC's presence strengthened under leaders like Ashok Anand. Later, a 2019 by-election was won by K Venkatesan of the DMK, before Rangasamy returned to power in 2021 under the AINRC banner, marking another shift in Puducherry's political landscape.