Congress returns to power in Puducherry after five years

Puducherry

With the front gaining absolute majority, with  the Congress alone winning 15 seats and DMK two, the party will stake claim to form the next government.

A Namasivayam,  PCC president elected from Villianur,  is expected to be at the helm of affairs in the Congress government.

It was a bitter taste of defeat for the All India N R Congress which could secure only 8 seats as against the 15 in the 2011 assembly elections. All the cabinet colleagues of Rangasamy (who won from Indira Nagar) and Speaker V Sabapathy were defeated in the elections.

For AIADMK candidate P Kannan who was hitherto a Congress Rajya Sabha member and who quit the party and joined the AIADMK to contest the elections from the Raj Bhavan constituency suffered a defeat at the hands of his “disciple.” His immediate rival was K Lakshminarayanan of the Congress who was Kannan’s “Sishya”  till recently.

Another heart-breaking defeat was  for E Valsaraj, a former minister and Congress candidate from Mahe who had never tasted defeat in the hustings for the past six times. The added agony was that the defeat came at the hands of an independent and incidentally this is the first time an independent is being elected from Mahe region.