Hyderabad: A candidate who contested for the post of a ward member in the Periyanaickenpalayam union in Coimbatore district has become the butt of jokes after obtaining only one vote in the elections. Twitter users trolled him as he has four family members.
The candidate, D Karthik. became the basis of humour for social media as the hashtag #SinglevoteBJP was trending on Twitter. Karthik managed to secure only one vote despite there being four other eligible voters in his family, reported The New Indian Express. The local body polls in the state were held on October 6 and 9 wherein 79,433 candidates had contested the polls for 27,003 posts.
“I did not contest on behalf of BJP. I contested in the election as an independent candidate on a car symbol. My family has four votes and all the votes are in ward 4 of the panchayat. Even my four family members and I have no vote in the 9th ward where I contested. Meanwhile, I am being wrongly mentioned in social media by trollers that I had contested on behalf of BJP and have not even secured my family member’s vote, which is not true.” responded D Karthik, speaking to The New Indian Express.
Writer and activist Meena Kandasamy tweeted saying, “BJP candidate gets only one vote in local body elections. Proud of the four other voters in his household who decided to vote for others.”
One Ashok Kumar of INC noted, “Five members is his family and this BJP candidate who contested forward member post got one single vote in Coimbatore!” This is how Tamil Nadu handles BJP.
However, it was pointed out by another Twitter user that Karthik’s posters for his election campaign included posters with the portraits of prime minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and seven other leaders including himself but he got only one vote.