Puducherry Assembly elections 2021, Ossudu profile: Congress turncoat E Theepainthan won seat in 2016

Ossudu is an Assembly constituency in Puducherry reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC).

Electors and turnout in 2016 election

As per the Election Commission's data, there were 28,973 registered electors (13,813 men, 15,159 women and one elector belonging to the third gender) in the previous Assembly election. The voter turnout was 90.72 percent across 31 polling stations.

Winners of previous elections

In the 2016 Assembly election, Congress' E Theepainthan had polled 33.02 percent of the votes. He had defeated BJP's Sai J Saravanan Kumar, who garnered 24 percent of the total votes polled in the constituency.

In 2011, AINRC's P Karthikeyan had registered a victory over DMK's A Elumalai with a margin of 5,158 votes. In 2006, Elumalai had bagged the seat as an Independent candidate and extended support to the Congress government led by N Rangasamy, as per the New Indian Express.

On 25 January, Theepainthan had submitted his resignation to Assembly speaker VP Sivakolundhu, along with Cabinet minister and Villianur MLA A Namassivayam. The two were suspended from the Congress and joined the BJP on 28 January.

The term of the Puducherry Assembly will end in early June, and elections for the 30 constituencies in the UT are likely to be held in April-May.