The United Democratic Front (UDF) has once again demonstrated its might in Puthuppally with its candidate Chandy Oommen winning by a landslide the byelection held to the Assembly constituency that was represented by his father Oommen Chandy for 53 years.
When the final result of the byelection was announced, Mr. Oommen bagged 80,144 votes (61.38%) to trounce his nearest rival Jaick C. Thomas, who contested as the Left Democratic Front’s candidate, by a margin of 37,719 votes. Mr. Thomas bagged only 42,425 votes (32.49%) while G. Lijin Lal, the candidate fielded by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) received only 6,558 votes to finish a distant third.
Erasing Chandy’s record
Riding on a massive sympathy wave triggered by the death of Chandy, a veteran Congress leader, and a perceived anti-incumbency wave against the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala, Mr. Oommen maintained a steady lead right from the first round of counting and raised the margin gradually in each round. In the process, he also surpassed the highest margin of 33,255 votes recorded by his father against the LDF candidate Suja Susan George in 2011.
Earlier in the day, excitement ran high among the UDF workers as the counting of votes began around 8 a.m. At the counting centre at Baselius College, Kottayam, there was an unmistakable air of restlessness as well. And as soon as they learned about the obvious outcome halfway through, the workers took to the streets, whistling and waving party flags.
The atmosphere at the residence of Mr. Oommen at Puthuppally too remained electric as Youth Congress workers from different parts of the State poured in and raised slogans in praise of Mr. Oommen and his late father without a break for hours. “Long live Oommen Chandy,’’ the crowd chanted, over and over.
For the LDF, particularly the CPI(M), the intense three-week-long campaign ended in complete disappointment as it witnessed a significant drop in its vote share from the 54,328 votes recorded in the previous Assembly election. The result also marks the third successive defeat of Mr. Thomas, who had contested against Chandy in 2016 and 2021 in Puthuppally.
NDA vote share
The National Democratic Alliance, meanwhile, could be seen nowhere in the picture as its vote share in the seat registered a further drop to 5.02% from 8.87% votes recorded in 2021. In the previous Assembly election, the coalition had bagged 11,694 votes.
The byelection was necessitated by the death of Chandy, a two-time Chief Minister of Kerala, on July 18. While the LDF had focussed primarily on the development imbalances in the Assembly segment represented by Chandy for 53 years, the UDF countered the charges by highlighting the ‘scams’ in which the State government is allegedly involved. The NDA, meanwhile, had set its campaign primarily on the welfare and development programmes implemented by the Union government.
As the parties stepped up political heat, the debates also gave way to malicious personal attacks, primarily on social media.
