Kochi: After seven rounds of counting, UDF’s Mohammed Shiyas, Ernakulam DCC President, has a lead of 4,179 votes over sitting LDF MLA KJ Maxy in Kochi in the assembly polls. While Shiyas secured 21,810 votes after Round 5, Maxy secured 18,355 votes. Shiyas has maintained the lead from the first round. Twenty20’s Xavier Joolappan, the NDA candidate in third position with just 6862 votes.

The early lead Shiyas in Kochi is more than a mere statistical fluctuation; it represents a potential breakdown of the traditional “identity-communal” bridge that has defined this constituency, which has a majority of Latin Catholic population since its formation in 2008. If this trend holds, it signifies a major failure of the LDF’s campaign rooted on development in the constituency and a surprising success for the UDF’s high-stakes gamble on a non-community candidate.

The LDF built its entire campaign around the 7.36 km tetrapod seawall in South Chellanam. By branding KJ Maxy as the “Guardian of Chellanam”, the Left hoped to override the anti-incumbency of ten years with a single, massive infrastructure project. However, the counting trends suggest the strategy has backfired.

In politics, partial solutions often breed more resentment than total inaction. While residents of South Chellanam felt safe with the new tetrapod seawall, the residents of North Chellanam, especially Puthenthodu and Kannamaly, who were left out of Phase 1 of the project, felt abandoned. The physical lack of progress on Phase 2, despite Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s inauguration just days before the polls, likely turned the northern coastal stretch into a UDF stronghold.

The most significant political takeaway from Shiyas’s lead is the apparent diminishing return of clerical endorsements. Historically, both fronts fielded Latin Catholic candidates to appease the Kochi and Varapuzha dioceses. In 2021, even a Latin Catholic candidate like Tony Chammany lost to Maxy, proving that community identity alone wasn't a silver bullet.

This time, the UDF took a defiant stance. VD Satheesan’s public jibe “keep your vote banks to yourselves” was a direct challenge to the church’s bargaining power, when there were reports of the clergy pushing for a community candidate for the UDF. By fielding Shiyas, a Muslim candidate and a non-Kochi resident, the UDF moved away from micro-representation to political aggression. Shiyas’s lead indicates that the Latin Catholic laity, particularly the younger demographic and those suffering from coastal flooding in Chellanam and tidal flooding in Kumbalangi, may have prioritised Shiyas’s ‘firebrand’ DCC President persona over the church’s preferred community candidate.

The 2025 local body elections were a big boost for the UDF. The UDF’s sweep of 14 out of 19 seats in Kumbalangi signalled deep-rooted frustration. In wards like Anjilithara, where 150 families are physically isolated by silt and salt water, the LDF’s focus on the Chellanam seawall felt like a distant priority. The failure of the state government to provide the ₹9 crore needed for modern bunds in Kumbalangi and desiltation created a vacuum that Shiyas successfully filled.

The LDF’s strategy to label Shiyas an ‘outsider’ appears to have been neutralised by his visibility as an approachable organisational leader. If Mohammed Shiyas maintains this lead, it will rewrite the playbook for Kochi.