Chennai: The nine AIADMK MLAs who won in the recently-concluded by-elections to the Tamilnadu Assembly, were administered the oath by Speaker S Dhanapal this morning.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and senior leaders were present during the oath-taking ceremony that took place in the Speaker’s Chamber in the Secretariat.
The by-poll was necessitated by the disqualification of 18 AIADMK MLAs for supporting AMMK founder T T V Dhinakaran. Totally, by-elections were conducted for 22 Assembly seats – the other four being for other reasons.
The by-elections were held in two phases: the first 18 seats went to polls along with the general elections 18 April. By-polls to the other four seats were conducted during the last phase of the 7-phase general elections, 19 May.
While the DMK managed to bag 13 of the 22 seats, it left nine for the AIADMK. But the AIADMK winning nine seats was sufficient to ensure the stability of the government in Tamilnadu.
The nine newly-elected AIADMK legislators are P Kandhasamy (Sulur), G Sampath (Sholinghur), A Govindasamy (Pappireddipatti), V Sampathkumar (Harur), S Thenmozhi (Nilakkottai), S Nagarajan (Manamadurai), M S R Rajavarman (Sattur), P Chinnappan (Vilathikulam) and N Sathan Prabhakar (Paramakudi).