In a major electoral push to the ruling party of Tamil Nadu, DMK-backed Congress candidate EVKS Elangovan has been taking up a big lead in the Erode East bypoll as the counting of the votes are underway in the constituency. The counting began during the morning hours of Thursday - March 2 and the voters' verdict are seemingly culminating to Elangovan's triumph. 

The bypoll was necessitated due to the untimely demise of Congress MLA Thirumahan Everaa, who died on January 4 at the age of 46 due to cardiac arrest. Everaa's father and former Union Minister EVKS Elangovan was picked as the candidate for the bypoll by the Congress party with a complete backing of its alliance including DMK. The DMK leaders from the ministers to Chief Minister MK Stalin had held an extensive campaign at the constituency seeking votes for Elangovan. 

Joining the scorching political battle on the other side was an already beleaguering ADMK, whose political infight reflected apparently in the Erode East race. While the battle displayed a crossing sword between the rival ADMK leaders Edappadi Palaniswami and O Panneerselvam, the party had finally announced its candidate as Thennarasu after Palaniswami was conferred with the legal rights to the command the party by the Supreme Court and the Election Commission had allotted the party's two-leaves symbol to his faction. 

The ballot had over 70 candidates and among them were the candidates from Seeman's Naam Tamilar Katchi and Vijayakanth's DMDK. But, as political pragmatism, the clash was between the DMK and the ADMK. The polling for the bypoll was held on Monday - February 27 and about 238 polling booths were installed. 2,26,898 voters were eligible to cast their votes and the polling began on 7 am. 

With 77 candidates on the ballot, the voters queued up to elect their new representative to the assembly. More than 1.7 lakh voters had cast their franchise. The bypoll recorded a voter turnout of 74.79%, which is the highest in the constituency since the 2011 assembly elections. Two days after the poll, the time has come to declare the voters' verdict. The counting of votes began on Thursday and since the first round, Congress candidate EVKS Elangovan has been leading with a good margin than his contender, ADMK's Thennarasu. 

The day was started by counting the postal votes. The bypoll had received a total of 398 postal votes and soon into the counting, Elangovan took the lead in postal votes and as the second phase, the votes registered in the EVMs (Electronic Voting Machine) were counted. Since the start of EVM counting, Elangovan's graph has been surging up with a humongous margin. 

As per the results of the first round, Elangovan has secured 4707 votes while ADMK's Thennarasu has got 1478 votes. Elangovan has peaked up in the second round and according to sources, as per the second round, Elangovan has bagged 19,223 votes while Thennarasu has got 6497 votes. The result of the second round soared Elangovan's margin to over 12,700 votes. 

By the time of writing this content, Elangovan has secured 19,867 votes while Thennarasu is in second place with 7,324 votes. Naam Tamilar Katchi candidate Menaka has got 1,013 votes and DMDK's Aravind has bagged 157 votes. With opinion polls predicting the victory of Elangovan, the current trend remains positive for the DMK and its alliance and relish the ruling party. Amidst the vote counting, the DMK and Congress cadres across the state have been celebrating the development. While the official result will be announced on Thursday afternoon, it is most likely that Elangovan will triumph the race and the Congress will retain its numbers in the assembly.