E-Paper
Kerala bypoll: 12.5% polling till 9am in Puthuppally
The bye-election was necessitated due to the death of former chief minister Oommen Chandy, who represented the Puthuppally seat uninterrupted since 1970 until his death
The Puthuppally byelection in Kerala’s Kottayam district recorded 12.5% polling till 9am on Tuesday. The voting began at 7am.
The constituency has 1.76 lakh registered voters and 182 polling stations. Four booths have been termed as ‘sensitive’ and additional security has been deployed there.
The bye-election was necessitated due to the death of veteran Congress leader, two-time chief minister and 12-time MLA Oommen Chandy, who represented the seat uninterrupted since 1970.
Chandy had succumbed to cancer at a private hospital in Bengaluru on July 18.
The Congress has named his son Chandy Oommen, a Youth Congress leader and a full-time participant in the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra last year, as the candidate in the bypoll.
The ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) has nominated Jaick C Thomas, a leader of the party’s youth wing DYFI who contested unsuccessfully twice against Chandy in 2016 and 2021. In 2021 elections, Thomas was able to bring down Chandy’s victory margin from over 27,000 votes to 9,000 votes. The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) also controls six of the eight gram panchayats that make up the constituency.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a minor player in the constituency, has named its district president Ligin Lal as its candidate. In 2021, the party got less than 10% of the vote-share.
Among Hindus, who form over half of the population in Puthuppally, Ezhava and Nair communities dominate. Christians comprise nearly 40 percent of the population with Orthodox and Jacobite Syrian Christian communities being influential in the constituency.
The result in Puthuppally will not have an impact on the state government as the LDF with 99 seats has a brute majority in the 140-member Assembly. The Congress-led UDF has 41 seats.
