Dharmadam (Keralam) [India], May 4 : Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday won the Dharmadam Assembly constituency seat with a total of 85,614 votes.
Vijayan was positioned against Congress's Abdul Rasheed and BJP's K Ranjith in the Dharmadam constituency.
Meanwhile, the Congress-led UDF in Keralam has crossed the majority mark in the 140-member Assembly, with election trends showing it comfortably ahead of the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The verdict is being seen as a decisive rejection of the LDF's 10-year tenure, marked by anti-incumbency.
During the 2021 elections, Vijayan ended up securing 95,522 (59.8%) votes, whereas United Democratic Front candidate C Raghunathan received 28.4% of the total votes polled.
The LDF had won the 2021 polls and broken the trend of the state having a change of government every five years. LDF had won 99 out of 140 seats in the 2021 polls, with CPI-M winning 62. Pinarayi Vijayan became Chief Minister for another term.
A UDF victory this time would also signal a generational shift in Keralam politics, as the party moves forward without stalwarts like K Karunakaran and Oommen Chandy. Leadership within the alliance is now centred around figures such as V D Satheesan, who has been a prominent voice against the LDF government.
Although anti-incumbency against the 10-year-old LDF government was widely expected, the scale of the UDF's lead has still drawn attention.
Meanwhile, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), for the first time in the history of Keralam politics, will now have three MLAs representing the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the Keralam Assembly.
Keralam went to the polls in a single phase on April 9, with a strong voter turnout of 78.27 per cent.
Counting began at 8 am today across 823 constituencies in key regions, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Keralam, Assam, and the Union Territory of Puducherry. The process began with postal ballots, followed by the counting of Electronic Voting Machines from 8:30 am, with round-wise results being updated in real time on the ECINET platform and the Election Commission's official portal.
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor