BJP Candidate Gets Only One Vote In Tamil Nadu Local Polls; He Has Five Members In His Family
A BJP functionary who contested the recently held local body poll as an independent candidate drew Twitterati's attention after he secured only one vote despite there being five members in his family.
D Karthik had contested for the post of a ward member in Periyanaickenpalayam union in Coimbatore district.?But his candidature became a mockery with the incident and the news spread through the media and went viral with #Single_Vote_BJP which went trending on Twitter.
However, reacting to the media, Karthik said that his family's vote was in ward number 4 and therefore they could not vote for him. Candidates in local body polls do not contest under political party symbols, though parties do back them officially.
What the candidate said
Speaking to The New Indian Express, Karthik, district deputy president of BJP Youth Wing, clarified, "I did not contest on behalf of BJP. I contested in the election as an independent candidate on a car symbol."
He added: "My family has four votes and all the votes are in ward 4 of the panchayat. Even my four family members and I have no vote in the 9th ward where I contested. Meanwhile, I am being wrongly mentioned in social media by trollers that I had contested on behalf of BJP and have not even secured my family member's vote, which is not true."
What leaders said on Twitter
The hashtag #Single_Vote_BJP has been trending on Twitter and has been used in over 12,000 tweets and counting.
Writer and activist Meena Kandasamy tweeted saying, "BJP candidate gets only one vote in local body elections. Proud of the four other voters in his household who decided to vote for others."
State Deputy Secretary of the DMK IT Wing Isai tweeted, ¡°BJP candidate from Coimbatore secured 1 vote in the local body election and his family has 5 votes.
One Ashok Kumar of INC noted, "Five members in his family and this BJP candidate who contested for ward member post got one single vote in Coimbatore!" This is how Tamil Nadu handles BJP.
Another Twitter user pointed out that the posters released by Karthik for his election propaganda had the portraits of prime minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and seven other leaders including himself but he got only one vote.
The local body polls in the state were held on October 6 and 9. In all, 79,433 candidates had contested for 27,003 posts.
