In a spectacular performance that stunned even its leadership, United Democratic Front's Anoop Jacob won the Piravom byelection in Kerala's Ernakulam district by defeating his Left Democratic Front rival M.J. Jacob with an unexpectedly wide 12,070-vote margin.
Since both the UDF and LDF had virtually turned the byelection into a referendum on the continuation in office of the nine-month-old Oommen Chandy government, the verdict has been interpreted as a clear mandate for the government to go forward. No Assembly election in the State in the recent memory has generated so much heat and excitement as the Piravom bypoll.
UDF surprised
The UDF leadership was pleasantly surprised by the huge lead its candidate secured in a sweep across all but two of the 12 panchayats that made up the Piravom constituency. The wide margin of victory and the convincing leads in most of the 134 electoral booths show a pro-UDF wave in a constituency where, hardly ten months ago, the late T.M. Jacob, Mr. Anoop Jacob's father, could just muster a 157-vote lead.
Of the total 1,58,261 votes polled in the election, the UDF scored 82,756 votes. The LDF's tally was 70,686. The Bharatiya Janata Party's K.R. Rajagopal trailed a distant third with just 3,241 votes. Of the six others who were in the field, Janata Party's Verghese P. Cheriyan got 437 votes, while Bindhu Haridas (Independent) polled 430 votes. N.T. Sureshkumar of the All-India Forward Bloc, with 96 votes, was the lowest scorer.
Barring the first round of counting that began at 8 a.m. at Muvattupuzha, the LDF candidate could not make headway in any of the rest of the rounds. The counting started with Thiruvankulam and Chottanikkara, which had been considered strongholds of the LDF and which had turned up impressive leads for the front in last year's Assembly election. But the thin margins of 365 in Thiruvankulam and 171 in Chottanikkara were far short of the LDF expectations.
LDF strongholds give in
The LDF had banked on these two panchayats to come to its rescue with wide lead margins. The thin lead was a pointer to the LDF's loss later. When the counting moved to other panchayats, it was advantage Mr. Anoop Jacob, who built up, panchayat by panchayat, a spectacular lead. By the time the counting was over by 9.45 a.m., the young Jacob had amassed a five-digit lead over the 67-year-old M.J. Jacob, a former MLA.
All the other 10 panchayats gave Mr. Anoop Jacob comfortable leads. By the time the votes from a half of the panchayats were counted, it was clear that he was heading for victory. The highest lead came from Thirumaradi (2,197 votes), followed by Elanji (1,832 votes). Piravom is the home panchayat of both Mr. Anoop Jacob and Mr. M.J. Jacob. The latter was the president of Thirumaradi panchayat, which had won the best panchayat award twice during his leadership.
The record polling percentage of 86.38 had in fact given an indication of where the election outcome was headed for. As a result of the long and sustained electioneering, which brought in almost all the top leaders of both the fronts to the nooks and crannies to the constituency, every able-bodied voter had shown up at the polling booth. And the high voter turnout has benefited the UDF.
While the UDF leaders hailed the victory as a convincing endorsement of the policies and programmes pursued by the Chandy Government, the LDF sees it as the outcome of the consolidation of ‘communal and casteist forces' and as a proof of the abuse of government machinery. The BJP dubbed the UDF victory as the result of the efforts of the organised religions and communities.
