Chennai:  T.T.V. Dinakaran of the ousted AIADMK faction (Sasikala group) has declared himself as the “true political heir” of the late J. Jayalalithaa after zooming ahead in the by-election to R.K. Nagar assembly seat in Tamil Nadu, the counting for which began this morning. Dinakaran contested as an independent candidate.

Dinakaran was on his way to victory and he crossed the 30,000 vote mark against E. Madhusudanan fielded by the AIADMK faction led by Chief Minister E Palaniswami and his Deputy O. Panneerselvam (EPS-OPS). Madhusudanan had got 15,949 votes at 1 pm while N. Marathu Ganesh of DMK managed to get 8,364 votes.

Thanking voters, Dinakaran, the sidelined AIADMK leader, has vowed to bring down the EPS-OPS government in the State “within three months”. The by-poll was primarily a contest between Dinakaran and the merged faction of Palaniswami and Panneerselvam, with the result deciding the battle for Jayalalithaa’s legacy.

Earlier this month, Dinakaran had lost the AIADMK’s ‘two-leaves’ election symbol to the faction led by EPS-OPS after the Election Commission recognised them as the “real” party. The sidelined AIADMK leader contested with a ‘pressure cooker’ as his election symbol.

The by-poll was first scheduled to be held in April this year, but was cancelled due to complaints of large-scale voter bribery. This round of voting was also not devoid of controversy. A Dinakaran loyalist released a video on the eve of the by-election purportedly showing Jayalalithaa in a hospital few days before her death.

Dinakaran was evicted along with his aunt V.K. Sasikala (who is currently in jail in Bengaluru in a corruption case) following a deal between AIADMK’s factions led by Palaniswami and Panneerselvam as they merged in August. Dinakaran and Sasikala have challenged that decision.