Idukki: Aam Aadmi Pary (AAP) has sprung a surprise in the Karimkunnam Grama Panchayat here by wresting UDF's sitting seat in the byelection held in the Nediyakadu ward. AAP candidate Beena Kurian won the polls by a thin margin of four votes. Beena got 202 votes while UDF candidate Sonia Jose polled 198.
UDF candidate Shaibi John had won the seat in the 2020 local body polls by 252 votes. The seat fell vacant after she went abroad necessitating the bypoll. The independent candidate with LDF support had secured 118 votes in the previous election. However, the LDF–supported candidate could gather only 27 votes this time due to the diversion of LDF votes to the UDF candidate, said AAP workers in the ward.
“Our candidate, who runs a medical lab, is known to everyone in the ward. We do not have any election strategies as such. We knew that people needed a change and told the voters that we would try our best to make the civic body corrupt-free. A single AAP member in the panchayat can expose the corruption there,” AAP district president Jacob Mathew said.
Karimkunnam mandalam secretary of AAP Geo Jose said the party also assured to take up various welfare schemes regardless of the technicalities. “As there was an AAP wave in the ward. UDF and LDF entered into a deal to divert votes to defeat our candidate/ This was evident during the last two days of the campaign. Otherwise, Beena would have got a convincing lead. She is the lone ward member for the party in the entire district,” Jose said.
AAP took out a victory march in Karimkunnam and Thodupuzha on Wednesday.
AAP functionaries in Idukki said that the party candidate had a tight competition with the LDF candidate at Areekara Ward of Veliyannoor Grama Panchayat in Kottayam. AAP's Sujitha Vinod lost the polls to LDF’s Bindu Mathew by 29 votes.
“In Areekara, the LDF-UDF deal came off well. The UDF which got 142 votes in 2020, could get only 11 votes this time around and the shifting of UDF votes to LDF led to AAP’s defeat in the ward. The UDF-LDF deal politics got exposed in both the wards,” Geo Jose noted.
