In a moral boost for the
outgoing UPA-II, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition to stall commissioning
of the Kudankulam nuclear plant in Tamil Nadu while expressing satisfaction at
the government’s steps towards safety measures. A bench led by K S Radhakrishnan
further nixed a plea to appoint a committee to review the safety concerns and
the extent of compliance by the central government and other authorities with
the court’s verdict in May last year.
The bench noted that most of the directions had been complied with by
the authorities and they still had some time left to fulfill the long-term
goals. Sundarrajan had moved the court, contending the authorities went ahead
with commissioning the plant without adhering to the directions of the Court
and Prashant Bhushan alleged that the plant had been commissioned in grave
disregard of the safety guidelines that had to be put in place before making it
operational. A section of the Press had portrayed that the agitations will have
huge impact on the election results in Tamil Nadu. 3 of the agitators were in the fray, all
contesting in AAP fold and one of them was a roman Catholic priest.
Now the election results are
out........ AIADMK has swept the State save 2..
the victory margins of AIADMK candidates have been astonishing ~ they
won by margin of more than two lakh in at least 12 constituencies, the biggest
one being P Venugopal's 3.2 lakh over VCK's D Ravikumar in Tiruvallur. The AIADMK victory was so emphatic in at
least 15 constituencies that the margins were higher than the combined votes of
the candidates who came second and third.
~ and many
times, educated people wonder whether their single vote is anything at all...
sometimes they do not even go the polling station stating so ... and some would
argue that when the margins are so huge, single vote is not going to make any
difference at all.......
Our next Prime Minister
Narendra Modi set an individual record
by winning the Varanasi seat by about 5.8 lakh votes and Vadodara by 5,70,128
votes. He polled 8,45,464 votes in Vadodara while Madhusudan Mistry , a
confidant of Rahul Gandhi, could only manage 2,75,336 votes. Both margins were
ahead of the BJP's V K Singh who piled up a winning difference of 5,67,260
votes over former actor Raj Babbar of the Congress.
Ladakh is different
............ Ghulam Raza, a congress rebel fighting as an Independent, lost the
Ladakh seat by a slim margin of 36 votes to BJP's Thupstan Chhewang.
Chhewang, who had won in 2004 as an Independent, bagged 31,111 votes. Congress
leader Ajit Jogi lost from Chhattisgarh's Mahasamund by a mere 1,556 votes even
after leading for the better part of the day
On a different plane at
Nilgiri where 2G scam, causing an estimated loss to the exchequer of anywhere
between `57,600 crore and `1.76 lakh crore was an issue ..... former telecom
minister A Raja, was defeated by AIADMK's Gopalakrishnan by a huge margin of more
than 1,04,000 votes. The voters in the
constituency also sent out a strong message against corruption: As many as
46,500 voters chose the None of the Above (NOTA) option -more than the votes
polled by Congress candidate P Gandhi (37,702) and one of the highest NOTA
counts across the country . The phenomenon was not restricted to Nilgiris, Chennai Central, where Dayanidhi Maran, was defeated, had a NOTA
count of 22,268.
The Kudankulam
agitations had no impact on the elections at all .. as Udayakumar, Pushparayan
and Jesuraj fared poorly at Kanniyakumar, Thoothukudi, and Tirunelveli securing
15314, 26476 and 18353 votes respectively.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
18th May 2014.
Photo credit : The Hindu; news from various sources primarily Times of India.
