Puthuppally bypoll: Chandy Oommen maintains steady lead

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As counting of votes polled in the Puthuppally by-election entered the fourth round, Congress candidate Chandy Oommen is heading for a landslide win with a lead of 15,000 votes, indicates an early trend.

With fresh trends indicating Chandy's victory, giant cut-outs of Oommen Chandy have started to come out on the streets.

As things stand now, around 80,000 more votes remain to be counted.

Veteran Congress legislator Ramesh Chennithala predicted Chandy Oommen would win with a margin of close to 50,000 votes, a feat which even the legendary Oommen Chandy, who won a record 12 assembly elections starting in 1970, failed to achieve.

The family of the late Oommen Chandy is glued to the TV sets at his house at Puthuppally, and his eldest grandson is holding his picture with Oommen Chandy and watching the counting of votes.

The supporters of the Congress have already started their victory celebrations, and a hilarious comment came from veteran CPI(M) central committee member and former State Minister A.K. Balan, who said if their candidate wins, it will be a new wonder of the world.

Incidentally, all along the nearly five weeks of the campaign, the CPI(M) was maintaining that the electorate at Puthuppally would hand a win for their candidate as even with Oommen Chandy being the legislator for 53 years, he did not care for developing his constituency.

What has come as a shocker for the CPI(M) is even its star campaigner, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who addressed election meetings at all the eight panchayats in the constituency, failed to evoke any response as Thomas is yet to lead in even a single polling booth where votes were counted.

Voting took place on September 5, in which 72.86 per cent of the voters exercised their franchise.

Of the 1,76 412 electorate, as many as 1,28,535 cast their votes.

The election became necessary after the passing away of sitting Congress legislator- Oommen Chandy, a two-time former Chief Minister who represented the constituency from 1970 for a record-breaking 53 years.

In the fray are Chandy's son Chandy Oommen for the Congress, CPI(M)'s Jaick C.Thomas in his third outing in the constituency, BJP's Lijin Lal and four others.

In the 2021 Assembly polls, Chandy defeated Thomas by 9,044 votes.