Congress candidate Uma Thomas on Friday comfortably won the Trikkakara bypoll with over 25,000 votes, with top Congress leaders slamming Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for his “arrogance” and “rude behaviour”. The party was performing “poorly” in the by-election. ,
Uma’s late husband PT Thomas won the April 2021 Thrikkakara assembly election by a margin of around 14,500 votes and even with some more votes counted, he surpassed the 22,406 votes polled by Congress candidate Benny Behanan. Most wins so far. 2011, when the constituency first came into existence.
State Congress president K. Sudhakaran said the ‘captain’ (as CPI-M workers Vijayan) has been framed.
“It was none other than CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan who had said that the decision in Thrikkakara bypolls would be the Vijayan government’s assessment. And now that the verdict has come, it is best that Vijayan should step down. Vijayan should understand that the people of Kerala do not think on the lines of development what he and his party think,” Sudhakaran said.
Former Defense Minister AK Antony said after campaigning in Trikkakara that voters would give shock treatment to Vijayan.
“The voters have done this and they have dealt shockingly to Vijayan’s arrogance and rudeness,” Antony said.
Two-time former chief minister Oommen Chandy was Uma’s star campaigner despite her ill health. He remained in the constituency for most of the days concentrating only on family meetings.
“It is a big victory for the Congress and the main reason is that there was complete cooperation between the entire UDF and everyone worked with full discipline. The development hash tag of Vijayan and the CPI(M) was never going to prove decisive as the people of Ernakulam know they played a bad game for every infrastructure project that came up here. Voters knew this and voted for us,” Chandy said.
Interventional Cardiologist CPI(M) candidate Joe Joseph said he congratulated the winner.
Joseph said, “I accept the verdict of the people and the CPI(M) will look into what happened,” Joseph often said that he would win with a six and help the CPI(M)-led Left get a century of legislators. . ,
Meanwhile, angry Congress workers vented their anger against former Congress stalwart KV Thomas, who quit the Congress and along with Vijayan burnt his effigy.
Congress workers were seen distributing a special fish, often said to be something Thomas used to gift top Congress leaders in Delhi to get their work done.
Ernakulam CPI-M district secretary CV Mohan termed the development “unexpected”. “We never expected it, but we humbly accept the decision of the people,” he said. With the kind of effort we made, this should not have happened. We have to analyze where we went wrong.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had reportedly led the campaign in Thrikkakara along with his cabinet ministers while 75 of his MLAs campaigned in the constituency.
Mohan, however, gave a clean chit to the chief minister, saying he never led the campaign.
“The chief minister never leads an assembly by-election and it was the district party that does it. This decision cannot be an assessment of the Vijayan government, as this is only one constituency and not a state level election,” Mohan said.
As soon as Mohan said this, TV channels started airing CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s earlier statement that he had no qualms in saying that this would be an “evaluation” of the Vijayan government.
Meanwhile, top CPI(M) leaders including Vijayan and Balakrishnan and others were locked up at the state party headquarters in the state capital.
In December last year, elections had to be held following the sudden demise of two-time Congress MLA from Thrikkakara PT Thomas.
While many expected it to be the highest turnout since the constituency came into existence, it turned out to be the lowest when polling ended, with only 68.77 percent of voters exercising their franchise.
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