Film star Innocent won the Chalakudy Lok Sabha constituency defeating Congress stalwart P.C. Chacko.
Innocent won by a comfortable margin of 13,884 votes. He polled 3,58,440 votes against Mr. Chacko’s 3,44,556 votes. Bharatiya Janata Party’s B. Gopalakrishnan polled 92,848 votes.
The Chalakudy contest had raised a lot of interest because P.C. Chacko had upset Congress calculations in the run up to the elections by opting out of Thrissur. He was elected to Lok Sabha from Thrissur in 2009.
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This time he alleged differences with the party leadership in Thrissur. His place was taken by K.P. Dhanapalan, MP from Chalakudy, who in turn contested and lost from Thrissur.
Mr. Innocent, who relied heavily on his charm and charisma throughout his campaign, attributed his victory to the hard work done by LDF workers for him. He said he had won not because of his personality but because all the votes from the LDF workers had come to him.
However, Mr. Chacko, who was closeted with close party colleagues at a house in Kalamassery throughout the vote counting process, said that Innocent had won a “colourful victory.” He congratulated the actor and said that it was Mr. Innocent’s on and offscreen personality that had helped him.
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He backed his argument by saying that the LDF had not considerably improved its position from 2009 in the various Assembly constituencies, the Lok Sabha constituency being made up of seven Legislative Assembly seats — Aluva, Angamaly, Perumbavoor, Kunnathunadu, Kaippamangalam, Chalakkudy and Kodungalloor.
The figures for various Assembly constituencies showed that Mr. Innocent was able to improve the Left Democratic Front position in Assembly segments held now by the United Democratic Front candidates. For instance in Kunnathunadu, where LDF MLA won by a margin of 8,732 votes in 2011 elections, Mr. Innocent took a lead of 2,385 votes.