Two reserved seats, five parties: what is at stake in the Madurantakam and Dharapuram bypolls

Voters in two Scheduled Caste reserved Assembly constituencies, Madurantakam in Chengalpattu district and Dharapuram in Tiruppur district, go to the polls on October 6 in the first electoral test for the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government since it took office this year. Votes will be counted on October 9.

Neither seat has held a byelection before. Both are now five-cornered contests between the TVK, the DMK, the AIADMK, the Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) and a Left Front candidate, with several Independents also in the fray in Dharapuram.

How the seats fell vacant

The vacancies were created by a single political move. Maragatham Kumaravel (Madurantakam) and P. Sathyabama (Dharapuram) both won their seats on the AIADMK's 'Two Leaves' symbol in the Assembly election of April 23, 2026. On May 25 they resigned as MLAs and, the same day, joined the TVK.

Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay has now fielded both of them again, this time as TVK candidates. The opposition says the defections were engineered; the TVK says the two women were pushed out by the AIADMK leadership's direction.

Madurantakam

The DMK has fielded I. Paranthamen, deputy secretary of its legal wing and the MLA for Egmore from 2021 to 2026. The AIADMK, in an announcement by general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami, named former legislator Kanitha Sampath. The CPI(M) is contesting for the Left Front with P. Suganthi, and the NTK has fielded Janakiraman.

The constituency lies about 100 km from Chennai. It is largely agrarian, with rice the main crop and vegetables grown around Vaiyavoor. It has a sizeable Scheduled Caste population, and about two per cent of residents are tribal people, chiefly Irulas. Over the decades the seat has been won almost equally by the DMK and the AIADMK.

Madurantakam has fallen vacant twice before without a byelection, because each time a general election was too close. One of those vacancies followed the death in September 1966 of former Minister B. Parameswaran, a grandson of the Dalit leader Rettamalai Srinivasan, who had represented the seat in the third Assembly.

Dharapuram

In Dharapuram, Ms. Sathyabama filed her nomination on September 16. So did the AIADMK's K. Bhanumathi and the NTK's M. Karthika. The DMK candidate is S. Suganya, and the CPI is contesting for the Left Front with P. Lakshmanan.

Scheduled Castes make up about a quarter of the constituency's population, and nearly 60% of voters are rural. The area receives relatively little rain from either monsoon, groundwater has been over-exploited in several places, and the Amaravathi river has been polluted by wastewater discharged by the Dharapuram municipality and other local bodies.

The seat is not safe for anyone. In 2021, the DMK's Kayalvizhi N. Selvaraj defeated the BJP's L. Murugan by just 1,393 votes, fewer than the 1,904 votes cast for NOTA.

The campaign: successor claims and 'benami alliance' charges

Campaigning in Dharapuram on Wednesday, Mr. Vijay set out his party's pitch most clearly. According to The Hindu, he praised the late Chief Ministers M.G. Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa for repeatedly defeating the DMK, and presented the TVK as their natural heir. He accused the current AIADMK leadership of contemplating a tie-up with the DMK, called the alleged understanding a "benami alliance", and said his government would complete long-pending irrigation, drinking water and infrastructure projects in the constituency.

Ms. Sathyabama broke down on stage while speaking about abuse she said she had faced online since switching parties. She said she had left the AIADMK not because she disliked the party but because of Mr. Palaniswami's approach.

The opposition's charge that the two MLAs were "bought over" has not been tested in any forum. What October 9 will show is narrower: whether voters in two reserved constituencies reward, or punish, a mid-term switch of party by the representatives they elected only five months ago.