Puthuppally bypoll: Congress' Chandy Oommen wins

Kottayam: UDF candidate Chandy Oommen, Youth congress outreach cell national coordinator and son of former Chief Minister of Kerala late Oommen Chandy has won the Puthuppally by-election by 78098 votes.

According to the election commission, the UDF candidate won by 36,454 votes over the LDF candidate Jaick C Thomas from the CPM.

Vote counting for the constituency, for which polling took place on September 5, started this morning under heavy security at Kottayam Baselius College.

Postal ballots were the first to be counted, followed by those from the elderly and finally the electronic voting machines.

Chandy Oommen got off to a fast start, with his lead quickly crossing 1,500.

As soon as the first trend was announced, the Congress-led UDF supporters broke into a huge applause outside the counting centre.

This bypoll was necessitated by the passing of Oommen Chandy, 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.

While Chandy Oommen is reportedly catching up with the trends from his ancestral home in Puthuppally, Thomas was at the district office of the CPI(M) along with the campaign's leader- State Minister for Cooperation V.N.Vasavan.

Although the Puthuppally result won't sway the state government, given the LDF's dominant 99-seat majority in the 140-member Assembly, it remains a pivotal political event capturing the nation's attention.