Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Monday (May 4, 2026) was defeated in his Kolathur Assembly constituency, a seat he had represented thrice since 2011. He is the fourth sitting Chief Minister in Tamil Nadu to lose an Assembly election.

Stalin has lost to V.S. Babu, the TVK candidate. Babu was once a close associate of the DMK president. He had served as the North Chennai district secretary of the DMK and was elected to the Assembly in 2006 from the Purasawalkam constituency.

Babu’s fortunes declined after the rise of P.K. Sekarbabu, a former AIADMK leader, in the DMK ranks. After being removed from the post of party district secretary, Babu joined the AIADMK. He joined the TVK just before the 2026 elections and was allotted the Kolathur constituency.

Babu will go down in history as a candidate who defeated a sitting Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. In the past, P.S. Kumarasamy Raja, M. Bhaktavatsalam, and Jayalalithaa were sitting Chief Ministers who lost elections. K. Kamaraj, another former Chief Minister, was also defeated, but he was not in office at the time; he lost from the Virudhunagar Assembly constituency. DMK student wing leader P. Srinivasan defeated Kamaraj.

Jayalalithaa was defeated in Bargur by DMK’s Sugavanam in 1996, and late Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi described him as “an elephant that entered the ears of an elephant.”

Source: The Hindu
-- Agencies