B. Shylaja of the Bharatiya Janata Party won the by-election in the Thevally division of Kollam City Corporation Council with a big a margin of 400 votes.
Of the 3,278 votes polled in the by-election held on Wednesday, the BJP candidate got 1,274 votes. The remaining votes were shared by three candidates in the fray.
The division is reserved for women. Left Democratic Front candidate N.S. Bindu of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) polled 874 votes and United Democratic Front candidate S. Lakshmi of the Congress polled 657 votes. Congress rebel Geetha Devakumar polled 473 votes.
In the local body elections held in 2015, the BJP had won two seats in the 55-member council and Thevally was one of them. BJP member Kokila S. Kumar was killed in a road accident in September last year. Ms. Shylaja is Kokila’s mother. Kokila had won the division by a majority of 219 votes. As much as 68.2 per cent of the 4,805 voters exercised their franchise. Counting of votes was held at the Kollam City Corporation headquarters in the morning and the result was announced before 11 a.m.
Ghost writer
Sympathy for Ms. Shylaja seemed to have worked in her favour in the form of a first-person letter from the dead Kokila.
It is not known who the ghost writer is. But the letter, laced with sympathy-drawing “appeals from the dead Kokila,” seemed to have touched a chord with the voters. Conspicuously, BJP campaigners largely sidelined the demonetisation issue. But when the results were out, slogans claiming that voters have supported demonetisation were heard.
