Acid test under way: polling begins in Madurantakam and Dharapuram as TVK faces its first electoral trial

Voters queued outside polling booths in Madurantakam and Dharapuram from 7 am on Tuesday as polling began in two by-elections that have turned into the first electoral examination of C. Joseph Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government since it took office in May 2026. Both constituencies are reserved for Scheduled Castes, and a total of 49 candidates are in the fray. Polling continues until 6 pm, with the district administrations declaring a local holiday to aid turnout and the Election Commission deploying EVMs with VVPATs at every booth. The bypolls were not supposed to happen. They were forced on voters when sitting AIADMK MLAs Maragatham Kumaravel and P Sathyabama resigned their seats and crossed over to the ruling TVK, which then renominated both from the constituencies they had just vacated. That sequence, the transfer of a mandate from one party's column to another's without a single vote being cast, has defined the entire campaign. AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami has called it what his party sees it as: "The by-election has been thrust upon Madurantakam because of horse-trading." Campaigning for his party in the final days, Palaniswami argued that voters who elected AIADMK candidates had their mandate traded away, and said the defectors should be taught a lesson at the ballot box. The DMK has been just as sharp. Leader of the Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin, who campaigned twice in Dharapuram for party candidate Suganya, charged that the Chief Minister was poaching legislators rather than winning voters: "Instead of buying votes, he's buying MLAs," he told a rally, recalling the development works the DMK government had carried out in the constituency between 2021 and 2026, including a government arts and science college and a government hospital. AMMK leader TTV Dhinakaran went further, calling Vijay a "hero" in cinema but a "villain" in real life and describing a TVK government as a "destructive government." In Dharapuram, TVK's Sathyabama faces DMK's Suganya, AIADMK's Banumathi, CPI's Lakshmanan and NTK's Karthika in a crowded contest. The campaign drew nearly every senior leader in the state into the two constituencies: DMK president M K Stalin and Udhayanidhi Stalin, Palaniswami, NTK chief coordinator Seeman, CPI state secretary Veerapandian and CPM state secretary Shanmugam, with TVK ministers deployed constituency-wise. The Election Commission has kept a tight watch on money power. Flying squads and surveillance teams have intensified checks across both constituencies to prevent cash distribution, a standard precaution that has acquired sharper meaning in a bypoll born of alleged political deal-making. Polling is being conducted amid tight security, with elaborate arrangements for power, water and crowd management. Counting of votes takes place on October 9. Whatever the result, Tuesday's vote is already a verdict of a kind: not just on two seats, but on whether a government that arrived at power promising a new politics can survive being judged by the oldest questions in Tamil Nadu's book, about mandates bought and mandates betrayed.