Chennai: All the six candidates, including Senior Congress leader and Former Union Minister P.Chidambaram, three from the ruling DMK and two from the Opposition AIADMK, will be declared elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Tamil Nadu on June three.
A total of 13 candidates, including seven independents have filed their nomination papers for the June 10 polls. As the filing of nominations for the elections to fill up six seats from the State Assembly ended yesterday, the papers were taken up for scrutiny today.
During scrutiny, the nomination papers of six official candidates, including Chidambaram and R.Girirajan, S.Shanmugasundaram and KRN Rajesh Kumar (all DMK) and former Law Minister C.Ve.Shanmugam and R.Dharmar (both AIADMK) were found in order.
The nomination of seven Independents were rejected as they did not have the support of any MLAs, Returning Officer and Assembly Secretary K.Srinivasan said here today.
Since there were only six candidates for the six seats, all of them will be declared elected unopposed to the Upper House of Parliament on June 3, the last date for withdrawals.
Rajesh Kumar will be elected for the second successive term. Of the total six seats that would fall vacant on June 29, the DMK chose to contest in three seats and allotted one to its ally, Congress, while the AIADMK could win the remaining two seats easily.
The DMK and its allies, which has a combined strength of 159 MLAs, including 18 from Congress, in the 234-member Assembly, can easily win four seats and the AIADMK Front (75 MLAs) has enough strength to win the remaining two seats.
The term of office of six members –three each from the DMK and the AIADMK– elected from Tamil Nadu is due to expire on June 29.
The six members are T.K.S. Elangovan, R.S. Bharathi, K.R.N. Rajeshkumar (all DMK), A. Navaneethakrishnan, A. Vijayakumar and S.R. Balasubramoniyan (all AIADMK). AIADMK’s former allies, the PMK and the BJP, which have five and four MLAs respectively, have announced their support to the AIADMK for the RS polls.
