Curtains comes down in by-elections in Kerala, as Palakkad voters cast ballots

Palakkad (Kerala), Nov 20 (IANS) The over-week-long spell of bypolls in Kerala ended on Wednesday as the voters of the Palakkad Assembly constituency cast their ballots.

The turnout at the official close of polls stood at 67.53 per cent, and is unlikely to cross the 75.44 per cent recorded in 2021, even though there were reports that people were still waiting in some booths and all those were in the queue before 6 p.m. were given tokens to vote.

The voting for the Palakkad Assembly constituency was earlier scheduled to be held on November 13, along with the Chelakkara Assembly constituency and the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency. But on November 4, the Election Commission, following requests from various political parties who cited that the local temple at Kalpathy was having its annual festival on November 13 and hence the date of polling should be changed, shifted the voting to November 20.

The by-election for the Palakkad assembly constituency was necessitated after sitting Congress legislator Shafi Parambil won the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency, trouncing one of the ruling CPI-M's most popular faces, sitting legislator and former Health Minister K.K. Shailaja.

Incidentally, Palakkad is one of the very few Assembly constituencies among the 140 in the state, where the BJP finished second in the 2021 polls.

The by-election campaign witnessed aggression from each side to outdo each other.

Ahead of candidate selection, all three political fronts -- the Left Democratic Front (LDF), the United Democratic Front (UDF), and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) -- witnessed internal bickering over the candidate selection.

Congress fielded Youth Congress President Rahul Mamkootathil, while the CPI-M had a prize catch in popular local Congress leader Dr P. Sarin who walked into its camp and was instantly fielded as a Left Independent candidate. The BJP brought in their popular local leader C.Krishnakumar, who has fought elections in the past, both to the Lok Sabha and the assembly, but is yet to win.

When the campaign entered the final round, there was a shocker for the BJP after its popular face, Sandeep Warrier joined the Congress.

While Parambil won a tight poll battle against Metroman E.Sreedharan with a slender margin of less than 4,000 votes in the last Assembly elections, all three candidates have predicted that they are going to win the seat with a margin of five digits.

Meanwhile, trouble broke out for BJP's Palakkad district President K.M.Haridas when reports surfaced that he has two voter identity cards and the Congress MP from Palakkad, V.K.Sreekandan said if he comes to cast his vote, they will raise the issue with the booth polling officials. As this news spread, Haridas failed to turn up to vote and Sreekandan said that while he and the Congress workers were waiting to see if Haridas would vote, there was no one from the CPI-M and this clearly shows that there is a tacit understanding between the BJP and the CPI-M.

Speaking to the media, Haridas said the outcome of today’s election is that Krishnakumar is going to win handsomely. "Since that’s going to be the outcome, I did not wish to create any unnecessary tensions and did not cast my vote," he said.

There were 10 candidates in the fray with a total electorate of 1,94,706 who voted in the 184 polling booths in the constituency.

--IANS

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