KUMARI BEING PULLED FROM ALL FOUR SIDES

Voters seek helicopter, sea ambulance to rescue fishermen from mid-sea; they also need big IT firms to start operations, offer jobs

- M ABDUL RABI

THE parliamentary constituency in the southernmost part of the country, Kanniyakumari, is set to see a four-cornered fight as Congress, BJP, AIADMK and NTK are set to lock horns with each other this Lok Sabha election, and the main contest will be between sitting MP Vijay Vasanth of Congress and former union minister and BJP candidate Pon Radhakrishnan.

Of the six assembly segments in the constituency, Congress holds Killiyoor, Colachel and Vilavancode (until its MLA S Vijayadharani joined BJP) and DMK holds Padmanabhapuram. Besides, Nagercoil and Kanniyakumari assembly constituencies are represented by BJP and AIADMK respectively. DMK also controls the Nagercoil municipal corporation.

After its creation in 2009, Kanniyakumari constituency has swayed both ways,as DMK clinched victory in the first election in 2009, followed by BJP in 2014 as business tycoon H Vasantha Kumar, the founder of Vasanth & Co, who contested on Congress ticket faced defeat at the hands of Pon Radhakrishnan.

In the next election in 2019, Vasanth clinched the seat back from the same Ponnar.

After the sudden death of Vasantha Kumar, the constituency saw a by-election in 2021 that saw a fierce battle between Vijay Vasanth, the son of the deceased MP, and Pon Radhakrishnan. Ultimately, Vijay emerged victorious by defeating Ponnar by a a margin of 1,37,950 votes.