Tamil Nadu Timeline

PoliticsRise of Dravidian rule

Kamaraj loses his seat to student leader P. Seenivasan

· Virudhunagar

Kamaraj loses his seat to student leader P. Seenivasan
Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

In the 1967 election, Congress president K. Kamaraj was defeated in Virudhunagar by the young DMK candidate P. Seenivasan.

In the 1967 Madras Legislative Assembly election, K. Kamaraj, then president of the Indian National Congress, contested from Virudhunagar. He was defeated by P. Seenivasan, a young DMK candidate associated with the student anti-Hindi agitation. It was the first electoral defeat of Kamaraj's career. The result symbolised the scale of the DMK victory over the Congress that year.

Related events

  1. 1941

    1. 31 May 1941VirudhunagarPolitics

      Kamaraj elected Virudhunagar municipal chairman while in jail

      While imprisoned for opposing war contributions, K. Kamaraj was elected chairman of the Virudhunagar municipality.

  2. 1956

    1. 27 Jul 1956 to 13 Oct 1956VirudhunagarProtest

      Sankaralinganar fasts to death for renaming the state Tamil Nadu

      Gandhian Sankaralinganar began a fast in Virudhunagar demanding that Madras State be renamed Tamil Nadu and died after 76 days.

  3. 1957

    1. Mar 1957ChennaiPolitics

      DMK contests its first election

      Won by Kamaraj's Congress, the 1957 Assembly election was the first in which the DMK took part after its founding.

  4. 1962

    1. Feb 1962ChennaiPolitics

      DMK becomes main opposition in 1962 election

      Congress under Kamaraj retained power in 1962, while the DMK won 50 seats to become the principal opposition party.

  5. 1967

    1. Feb 1967ChennaiPolitics

      DMK wins the 1967 Assembly election

      A DMK-led alliance defeated the Congress, ending Congress rule in Madras State; Kamaraj lost his own seat.

  6. 1971

    1. Mar 1971ChennaiPolitics

      DMK wins 184 seats in the 1971 election

      The DMK, allied with Indira Gandhi's Congress, won a landslide in the first Assembly election held under the name Tamil Nadu.

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