Data Investigation

The Dummy Candidate Problem

How namesake candidates are used to engineer voter confusion in the Tamil Nadu 2026 Assembly Election

4,000
Candidates Analyzed
234
Constituencies
—
Suspicious Pairs
—
Affected Seats
The pattern is unmistakable: In constituency after constituency, Independent candidates appear on the ballot with names nearly identical to major party nominees — differing only by a single initial. In Alandur, the ADMK candidate S. Saravanan faces three namesakes: A. Saravanan, D. Saravanan, and R. Saravanan — all Independents. This is not coincidence. — of suspected dummy candidates filed as Independents.

Who Gets Targeted?

Breakdown of dummy candidate pairs by target alliance and match severity

Target Alliance

Match Severity

Top Targeted Parties

Who Fields the Dummies?

Worst Affected Constituencies

Constituencies with the highest concentration of suspected dummy candidates

Constituency Explorer

Select any affected constituency to see all suspected name-match pairs

Complete Dataset

All suspicious name-match pairs — filter by type, search, or click headers to sort

Constituency ▲ Target Candidate ▲ Party ▲ Alliance ▲ Suspect ▲ Suspect Party ▲ Sim% ▲ Type ▲

Methodology

We compared every non-major-party candidate against INDIA alliance (DMK, INC, VCK, CPM, CPI, MDMK, IUML, MMK), NDA alliance (ADMK, BJP, PMK, DMDK), TVK, and NTK candidates within the same constituency. Names were normalized by removing honorifics (Dr., Thiru., Smt.), single-letter initials, and punctuation.

Exact Match Names identical after removing initials and prefixes. Example: "V. Sampathkumar" vs "S. Sampathkumar"
Near Match (≥85%) Full-name similarity handles spelling variants. Example: "Nithyanandhan" vs "Nithyanandan"
Word Match A significant name-part (≥4 chars) appears in both names. Example: "C. Joseph Vijay" vs "Vijay. G"

Disclaimer: Not every match is an intentional dummy candidature. Common Tamil names (Kumar, Selvam, Raja, Murugan) naturally recur. However, the concentration of Independents with near-identical names to major party candidates — particularly multiple namesakes per constituency — is statistically notable and warrants scrutiny. Data sourced from ECI Affidavit Portal (affidavit.eci.gov.in) on April 17, 2026.