Perumbavoor chooses Kunnappilly again, but with reduced margin

Twenty20 seems to have taken a share of traditional Congress votes in constituency

May 03, 2021 01:19 am | Updated 01:19 am IST - KOCHI

Fears that the apolitical Twenty20 may foil the chances of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Perumbavoor faded after Eldhose Kunnappilly of the Congress won the electoral battle by 2,899 votes.

Mr. Kunnappilly will represent the constituency for the second consecutive time after he topped the list with 53,484 votes. In 2016, he had defeated Saju Paul of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) by a margin of 7,088 votes. However, Mr. Kunnappilly’s overall lead went down to 2,899 votes this time. Chitra Sukumaran, the Twenty20 candidate, seems to have taken a share of the traditional Congress votes after she won 20,536 votes to come third in the race. T.P. Sindhumol of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended up fourth, with 15,135 votes.

The Left’s decision to hand over the seat to its ally Kerala Congress (M) did not yield results as its candidate Babu Joseph emerged runner-up with 50,585 votes. It was widely expected that the votes won by the Twenty20 candidate would help the Left front wrest back the constituency from the UDF.

The vote share of the three key fronts witnessed a dip in this election. Mr. Kunnappilly had won 64,825 votes in 2016 while Mr. Paul of the CPI(M) had bagged 57,197 votes. The BJP was the worst hit as its votes dropped from 19,731 votes to 15,135 in this election. The total number of votes polled in 2016 was 1,45,727 while the corresponding figure this time was 1,44,171.

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