After two decades, Vaiko returns to Assembly polls

Vaiko announced his candidature at an election rally on Saturday. The announcement has come as a morale booster for party workers. “We are happy that our leader is again in the fray in the Assembly poll after 20 years,” a senior party functionary said. 

In the 1996 Assembly election, just three years after founding the MDMK, he had contested from Vilathikulam segment and lost by a narrow margin of 634 votes to DMK candidate K Ravisankar, who polled 30,190 votes. He lost in the Lok Sabha election too that year and only emerged third by bagging 2,04,339 votes in Sivakasi seat. Since then, Vaiko has not contested in Assembly polls though he won in Lok Sabha polls from the same Sivakasi seat in 1998 and 1999. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls he lost in Virudhunagar. 

Meanwhile, the party on Saturday named its nominees for 27 seats, which includes its chief Vaiko. Of the 29 seats it has been allotted in the DMDK-PWF combine, MDMK named candidates for 27 seats and gave away two from its kitty to its allies, fringe Tamil nationalist outfits -- Ki Veeralakshmi of Tamilar Munnetra Padai (Pallavaram) and Nagai Tiruvalluvan of Tamil Puligal Katchi (Dharapuram).