Vaithilingam to fight new entrant for lone LS seat in Pondy

Senior Congress leader V Vaithilingam, who has quit the post of Puducherry assembly Speaker to jump into the poll fray, filed his nomination on Friday for the lone Lok Sabha seat here, election for which would be held on April 18.

AINRC nominee and doctor-turned-politician K Narayanasamy also filed the nomination.

This is the first time that Vaithilingam and his rival Narayanasamy are contesting the Lok Sabha elections here although the former has been a legislator without a break since his victory in 1985.

Vaithilingam, 69, who belongs to a family of freedom fighters, was also Chief Minister twice in 1991 and 2008.

His father, the late V Venkatasubba Reddiar, was a freedom fighter and also a former Chief Minister.

Vaithilingam was returned consecutively to the Assembly from his native village of Nettapakkam from 1985 till it became a reserved constituency in 2011.

He shifted his constituency in 2011 to Kamaraj Nagar in the town limits and emerged victorious in the Assembly poll held in 2011 and retained it in 2016.

On the other hand, 30-year-old AINRC nominee Narayanasamy is a greenhorn in politics.

He hails from a village and his family owns a couple of professional colleges in the union territory.

His father, the late N Kesavan, was a DMK legislator of Puducherry.

Other candidates who filed the papers Fridaywere: S Mothilal (CPI Marxist-Leninist), Dr M A S Subramanian (Makkal Needhi Maiam) and N Sharmila Begam.

Of them, Subramanian is a former AIADMK legislator.

With this, the total nominations filed since the polling process commenced on March 19 has gone up to seven.

Although the Thattanchavady assembly constituency goes to the bypoll simultaneously on April 18, no nomination has been filed by any aspirant.