UDF wins 18 seats, LDF and NDA get 1 each

The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) put up a commanding performance in the Lok Sabha elections in Kerala, winning 18 of the state’s 20 seats and reducing the CPM-led LDF and the BJP-led NDA to one seat each, results from the Election Commission showed on Tuesday.

Though the Congress and CPM are part of the national INDIA bloc and are fighting together elsewhere, in Kerala, they are part of rival coalitions.

Among the UDF constituents, the Congress won 14 of the 16 seats it contested, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) two seats and the Kerala Congress (KEC) and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) one seat each.

Shashi Tharoor was among the UDF winners on Tuesday when he saw off the challenge raised by BJP’s Rajeev Chandrasekhar and retained the Thiruvananthapuram constituency by a margin of just over 16000 votes.

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who led the campaign of the national INDIA bloc, retained the Wayanad seat by over 3.6 lakh votes, defeating his nearest challenger Annie Raja of the CPI. Gandhi’s margin this time has dropped from the 4.3 lakh votes he won by in 2019.

Among the other UDF winners were state Congress chief K Sudhakaran (Kannur), former youth Congress president Shafi Parambil (Vatakara), RSP leader NK Premachandran (Kollam), Congress general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal (Alappuzha) and state working president Kodikunnil Suresh (Mavelikkara).

Congress’ Leader of Opposition in the Kerala Assembly VD Satheesan said the anti-incumbency sentiments of the people against the LDF government led by Pinarayi Vijayan contributed to the massive victory of the UDF.

“This is a political victory for us and will be remembered always as a memorable one. The sentiments of anger and dismay against the LDF government reflected in the election in our favour. The UDF was able to pin-point the failures of the state government in front of the people. While four UDF candidates’ margins crossed 2 lakhs, nine others had margins of over one lakh. I want to thank all the UDF and Congress workers who worked tirelessly through the campaign,” said Satheesan.

The LDF, which won just one seat in the 2019 polls, crashed to a similar humiliating defeat: CPI(M) minister for temple administration K Radhakrishnan won the sole Alathur (SC-reserved) seat. The BJP, which had never won a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, made history with actor-politician Suresh Gopi cruising to a comfortable victory in Thrissur by a margin of 74686 votes over his nearest CPI rival VS Sunil Kumar.

The CPM state secretariat said that it respects the people’s mandate and vowed to make necessary amends to improve the party’s performance in forthcoming elections.

“This election raises the need to make ideological and organisational interventions to stop the rise of communal forces. The party will march ahead by making the necessary corrections after examining the election results in the right way. More movements will be planned by the party by aligning with the public in a much closer way,” the party said.

The UDF’s win indicates that it rode on the sentiments of anti-incumbency against the Pinarayi Vijayan government at the state level and the Narendra Modi government at the national level, said J Prabhash, a former professor of political science at Kerala University.

“It was a double negative against Pinarayi and Modi. As you know, two negatives make a positive which fell in favour of the UDF. There are also signs of a minority consolidation in favour of the UDF across the state like in 2019. While Muslims and Christians supported the UDF everywhere, except in Thrissur, a section of the Hindus, who have traditionally voted for the CPM, went toward BJP this time,” said Prabhash.

The CPM’s statewide defeat was underlined by the fact that KK Shailaja, the former state health minister who enjoys wide popularity especially among young people, was crushed by a margin of over 1,10,000 votes in Vatakara by Shafi Parambil of the UDF.

BJP state president K Surendran said the party will celebrate statewide the victory of Gopi in Thrissur.

“We told people that this election will mark a big change in the politics of Kerala. The people of the state have accepted the development and welfare oriented agenda of the BJP and NDA. That’s why, we were able to win big in Thrissur and make big gains in the other 19 seats.”