E-Paper
27.7 million voters to decide fate of 194 candidates in Kerala
Chief electoral officer Sanjay Kaul said that all arrangements are in place across 25,231 polling stations in the state
The 20 parliamentary constituencies in Kerala will go to polls on Friday as part of the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections. At least 27.7 million voters will vote for 194 candidates. At least 500,000 voters will vote for the first time, according to data.
Chief electoral officer Sanjay Kaul said that all arrangements are in place across 25,231 polling stations in the state. “There will be 555 polling booths where all personnel are women and 10 booths where all personnel are differently-abled. A total of 62 companies of the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) have been deployed in the state to monitor security arrangements,” he said.
On Thursday, candidates of all leading political fronts spent the day interacting with voters, distributing voting slips, meeting religious and community leaders and holding last-minute meetings at party offices.
The prominent candidates in the fray include MLA KK Shailaja, Devaswom minister K Radhakrishnan, former agriculture minister VS Sunil Kumar, former finance minister TM Thomas Isaac from the LDF, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, CWC member KC Venugopal, CWC member Shashi Tharoor from the UDF, Union ministers V Muraleedharan and Rajeev Chandrasekhar and BJP state president K Surendran from the NDA.
Fierce contests are expected in constituencies like Vatakara, Thrissur, Thiruvananthapuram and Alappuzha.
In the 2019 elections, the UDF had won 19 of the state’s 20 seats while the LDF won 1 seat. The BJP-led NDA has never been able to win a seat in the state. The voter turnout in the state in 2019 was 77.84%.
The votes will be counted in Kerala, along with the rest of the country, on June 4.
