United Democratic Front (UDF) candidate and Congress leader Shafi Parambil will retain the Palakkad assembly constituency, according to the Manorama News-VMR exit poll result released on Thursday.

He will pip National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate E Sreedharan, popularly known as 'metroman', for the hat-trick win, the poll predicted.

Shafi will get 38.4% per cent votes while Sreedharan will collect 33.6% per cent votes.

Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidate C P Pramod of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) will finish third with 21% per cent votes.

Palakkad witnessed a high-voltage three-way fight among UDF, NDA and LDF.

Shafi had defeated CPM's KK Divakaran by 7,403 votes in 2011. He was re-elected in 2016 with a win over BJP’s Shobha Surendran by 17,483 votes. CPM’s senior leader NN Krishnadas finished third.

All the three fronts excessively raised infrastructure development as the main campaign issue this time. E Sreedharan received much more media attention than his rivals. But he kicked off a controversy when he said he has an aversion for beef eaters and Love Jihad is a reality in Kerala. Love Jihad is a term coined by right-wing outfits to allege a conspiracy by Muslim men to marry women from other religions solely to convert them to Islam. Political observers noted that Sreedharan might lose secular and minority votes because of the controversial statements.