By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
Kochi: The United Democratic Front led by the Indian National Congress won all the three seats in the Kerala by-elections. AP Abdullakkutty (Kannur), Dominic Presentation (Ernakulam) and AA Shukoor (Alappuzha) of the Congress defeated the nearest rivals from the Left Democratic Front in the highly competitive election.
AP Abdullakkutty defeated MV Jayarajan of the CPI (M) by 12,043 votes in Kannur. Abdullakkutty got 53,987 votes while Jayarajan got 41,944 and the BJP candidate Ranjith got only 5,665 votes. The victory of Abdullakkutty is a great success for the Congress and a big failure of the CPI (M) as he had left the CPI (M) only a few months ago. The Social Democratic Party of India which fielded its state general secretary P Abdul Majeed Faisy got 3,411 votes in its debut contest in election.
Dominic Presentation of the Congress defeated PN Seenulal of the CPI (M) by 8,620 votes in Ernakulam. Mr Presentation bagged 46,119 votes whereas Seenulal got 37,499 and Shobha Surendran of the BJP got 7,208 votes.
The Congress won the by-election held at Alappuzha also with its AA Shukoor bagging a majority of 4,745 votes. Mr Shukoor got 42,707 votes while his nearest rival Krishnaprasad from the CPI got 37,978 votes. BJP’s K Babu had to be content with a mere 2,247 votes.
Abdunnasir Ma’dani’s People’s Democratic Party too had contested here and has got 1,804 votes.
The candidates of the UDF have won in all the three constituencies with clear margins which tend to state that the pro-UDF trend in Kerala during the Parliament elections still remains. The UDF has retained their sitting seats, though giving a big blow to the ruling LDF especially in the defeat of MV Jayarajan by AP Abdullakkutty. MV Jayarajan is a senior leader of the party while Abdullakkutty left the CPI (M) and joined the Congress only a few months ago. Abdullakkutty had earlier been in the Parliament twice representing the CPI (M). The PFI which had supported the UDF in Ernakulam and Alappuzha gave its votes to its own political party SDPI in Kannur.
The UDF could also better its performance in Ernakulam constituency as Mr Presentation’s majority is more than what former MLA KV Thomas had got. Mr Thomas got only a majority of 5,800 votes in 2006. Even though there were poll boycotts in two areas due to transportation problems, the polling percentage was 64.64 in the constituency while last time it was only 49%.
This is reportedly the first time after forty years that the Congress has fielded a Muslim candidate in Alappuzha. However, the party which had a majority of more than 10,000 votes in the last elections in Alappuzha got only a majority of about 5000 this time. KC Venugopal of the Congress had won from the constituency by a majority of over 15,000 votes in 2006. Though it is the fifth consecutive time that the constituency has been standing by the Congress, the people have given only less number of votes this time.