Kottayam: In the beginning was the rush. It looked like Puthuppally was going to witness a record turnout of voters in the assembly bypoll on Tuesday necessitated with the death of Oommen Chandy. The rush continued till afternoon with nearly 55 per cent of the voters casting their votes by 2 pm despite a brief but strong spell of rain earlier in the day. However, the speculations over a massive polling were proved wrong as the constituency, held by Oommen Chandy for a record 53 years, settled for 72.91 per cent of polling when it was time to call it a day.
Of the 1,76,412 voters, 1,28,624 exercised their franchise in the bypoll. The turnout is in tune with Puthuppally’s usual trend in assembly elections. The polling percentage was 74.90 in 2021 and 77.40 in 2016. While a massive turnout would have indicated some sort of voter consolidation, as usually the cases is, the usual figure has prompted the parties in the fray to adopt a wait and watch mode and make typical claims. One reason cited for the drop is that a significant number of voters in the constituency is abroad for work or studies. A UDF leader, who investigated the matter as part of election campaign, pegged the number around 10,000.
This time, all the eight panchayats in the assembly segments have recorded a little over 70 per cent of votes, going by unofficial figures, and the key contenders – Congress-led UDF and CPM-led LDF – claim that they could ensure that their supporters cast their votes.
Senior Congress leader and Kottayam MLA Thiruvanachoor Radhakrishnan told Onmanorama that the UDF will lead in all the eight panchayats this time. In the 2021 assembly election, the UDF had gone beyond LDF in Manarcaud panchayat, the native place of CPM candidate Jaick C Thomas. Jaick is the Left front’s candidate this time also and he is facing Oommen Chandy’s son Chandy Oommen who contested on the Congress ticket and BJP’s Lijin Lal.
Thiruvanchoor exuded confidence that the UDF would regain the votes it had lost last time. He said his party’s assessment that the final voting percentage would be at least twop per cent higher than what is already stated and the increase would help Chandy Oommen.
The Congress camp’s assessment, as told by two prominent leaders in the Kottayam district, is that Chandy would win by a margin between 25,000 and 35,000. Oommen Chandy’s largest winning margin, among his 12 consecutive contests from Puthuppally, is 33,255 votes in 2011 when he faced CPM’s Suja Susan George.
The UDF’s calculation this time is that an evident sentiment in favour of Chandy Oommen following the death of his father and anti-incumbency wave against the Pinarayi Vijayan-led government will result in a bigger win by its candidate.
The LDF, which could almost stage an upset in 2021 as it brought down Oommen Chandy’s victory margin to 9,044, is also confident that it would breach the UDF fortress this time.
“We have been able to ensure that all of our supporters cast their votes. The turnout which is almost near the previous figure indicates that there was no surge in favour of UDF,” CPM district secretariat member K M Radhakrishnan told Onmanorama. He, however, had a caveat. “The BJP has around 10,000 votes in the constituency. If they poll it, we will win 100 per cent,” he said. BJP scored 15,993 votes in 2016 and 11,694 in 2021.
The BJP camp, which fought the bypoll highlighting the benefits of the central government schemes, is hoping that their tally would increase this time.
