Bucking strong undercurrents, the Congress nominee and Minister of State for Home Mullappally Ramachandran retained the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency, the results of which were declared on Friday.
Unlike last time, he won by a small margin of 3,306 votes defeating his nearest rival A.N. Shamseer of the CPI(M) in a fiercely contested battle.
One of the electronic voting machine that had recorded 724 votes from Chakkittapara grama panchayat in Perambra Assembly segment will be counted later. This was decided after CPI (M) counting agents opposed its counting. The machine that had developed glitches had been misplaced during the time of counting on Friday.
Mr. Ramachandran got 4,16,479 and Mr. Shamsheer 4,13,173 of the total votes polled. The Congress candidate established leads in five Assembly segments — Vadakara, Kuttiyadi,Nadapuram, Koyilandy, and Perambra, all in Kozhikode district — while Mr. Shamsheer, fetched more votes in the Thalassery and Koothuparamba Assembly segments, both in Kannur district.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Mr. Ramachandran had registered leads in six out of the seven Assembly segments except Thalassery. Then, he had won by a margin of over 50,000 votes in this traditional Left bastion. Quite interestingly, in the last 2011 Assembly elections, the LDF turned the tide by winning six Assembly seats except Koothuparamba.
The high-pitched campaign in the Vadakara constituency also saw the highest turnout of 81.61 per cent in the State. The Congress had hoped to repeat its performance while the CPI (M) pinned on anti-incumbency to work against Mr. Ramachandran.
But the small margins Mr. Ramachandran received in Muslim regions especially in Nadapuram and Perambra Assembly segments revealed that the Indian Union Muslim League could have pulled the rug under the feet of the Congress candidate.
The Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) candidate P. Kumarankutty could garner only 17,229 votes thereby raising doubts whether the party had made an impact after the brutal murder of its leader T.P. Chandrashekaran in Vadakara in May 2012.
The Bharatiya Janata Party made an impressive performance possibly riding on the Modi wave. The party’s candidate V.K. Sajeevan secured 76,313 votes, more than 35,000 its candidate received last time.
The SDPI candidate P.A. Hameed got 15,058 and the AAP candidate and film-maker Ali Akbar, 6,235 votes. Interestingly, an Independent A.P. Shamsheer received 3,485 votes and NOTA, 6,107 votes.
