Maymol P Davis, a former Assistant Professor from Ernakulam, has a way with the law. After she secured a landmark ₹45-lakh compensation from the Kerala Forest Department in July 2024, the 34-year-old  has scored another legal victory—this time against the Kerala State Election Commission. The Kerala High Court has ordered that her name be restored to the voters' list for the upcoming local body elections, a fight she once again led without a lawyer.

A double postgraduate, Maymol lived with her cancer-stricken mother, Moly Davis, and her brother George in Vengoor panchayat. On August 13, 2025, she handed over her property to the Forest Department after repeated wildlife attacks, and the family relocated to Kottappady near Kothamangalam.

While checking the Election Commission website on September 3 to confirm whether she needed to register at her new address, she found her name still present in the Vengoor rolls and saved a screenshot. But in October, when the Congress party approached her as a possible candidate for the Ernakulam district panchayat, she rechecked the portal—only to find both her name and her mother’s removed.

She emailed the Election Commission on October 18, demanding restoration of her voting rights, and followed up with calls. Officials later told her that although the website showed her name in September, it had actually been deleted on August 28 after her land transfer. The deletion process, they said, began on August 12—one day before the registration—while the website had simply failed to update the change.

When she approached the Vengoor panchayat, she was informed that her name was removed because the house on the surrendered land no longer existed, as required before the transfer. “Legally correct,” she says, “but the problem was that I hadn’t completed the mandatory three to six months of residence in my new place. I could not be included in the new list, and I had already been removed from the old one. That meant I would lose my right to vote completely.”

Her appeal before the Joint Director of the Local Self-Government Department was rejected. She then moved to the Kerala High Court.

The case came before Justice P V Kunhikrishnan. “He recognised me instantly from my earlier case,” she says. In her petition, she sought provisional restoration of her name in the Vengoor roll, arguing that a citizen should not lose constitutional voting rights due to administrative delays in updating the website. She submitted the screenshot she had taken as evidence.

The court agreed and directed: “The petitioner’s name shall be included in the final voters list by tomorrow.”

The order came on November 20—just a day before the last date for filing nominations—and by then, the Congress had chosen another candidate. “It wouldn’t have been right to ask them to replace someone who had already stepped forward,” she says.

But the episode has only sharpened her political resolve. She now intends to contest the upcoming Assembly elections. “If the Congress offers me a seat, I will gladly take it. If not, I am prepared to stand as an independent. I will contest—there is no doubt about that,” she says. Perumbavoor and Kothamangalam are among the constituencies she is considering. “I believe I have the capacity to be an MLA. Even if I don’t win as an independent, I won’t regret giving it a try.”

Her confidence is rooted in experience. After surrendering her land under the Rebuild Kerala Development Programme in 2023, she fought alone in the High Court to complete the property registration after the original title deed went missing, and later to secure timely compensation. Unable to afford legal assistance, she studied law independently using Delhi University’s LLB syllabus and learned how to draft petitions and argue cases. That training helped her take on the Election Commission as well.

She has now filed another petition seeking ₹3 lakh in compensation for the emotional and procedural strain she endured during the forest department case. With an MA in History and Archaeology, Maymol worked as an assistant professor in Pune until an autoimmune condition—worsened by a botched surgery that partially paralysed her right hand—forced her to quit in 2018.

And now, she also supports people in her community who cannot afford legal help, guiding them through court procedures. “Everyone knows by now that I don’t back down,” she says. “If someone tries to deny me my rights, I will fight—even if it means taking on the government alone.”