In a nail biting finish, DMK wins Vellore Lok Sabha seat

In nail biting finish, DMK's D M Kathir Anand on Friday won the Vellore Lok Sabha seat in Tamil Nadu defeating his nearest rival AIADMK's ally A C Shanmugam by a narrow victory margin of 8,141 votes. The DMK candidate polled 4,85,340 votes and garnered a 47.3 per cent vote share as the party wrested the seat from its arch rival which had won the seat in 2014.

The lead kept changing before the DMK candidate was declared elected at the end of the counting of votes in the poll held on August 5. Shanmugam, who contested the poll on the AIADMK's two-leaves symbol, polled 4,77,199 votes and got 46.51 per cent share, the Election Commission announced.

The poll to the Vellore Lok Sabha seat, originally scheduled to be held in April along with the other 38 constituencies in Tamil Nadu, was cancelled following seizure of huge cash in the runup to the election..