Kottayam: The Bharatiya Janata Party witnessed a sharp drop in votes in the Puthuppally bypoll on Friday. The BJP had fielded its district president Ligin Lal as the candidate in Puthuppally.
UDF candidate Chandy Oommen secured a victory margin of 37,719 in Puthuppally on Friday. Out of the total votes (1,30,563) polled Oommen won 61 per cent (80,144) and LDF's Jaick C Thomas secured 32.49 per cent vote share (42,425).
BJP's vote share of 6,558 (5 per cent) is less than what it secured in 2011 (5.57 per cent). As the party has not secured 1/6th of the total votes in the elction, the candidate will lose his deposit. In 2006, it got 3,522 votes (3.05 per cent). It's best performance was in 2016, when it got nearly 12 per cent (15,993 votes) of the vote share.
Since then the party has witnessed a slide. in 2021, the vote share dipped by 3 percentage points to 8.87 per cent. It polled 11,694 votes. And now to around 5 per cent, a drop of 3.87 per cent.
In the past 12 assembly elections Oommen Chandy contested, his vote share dipped below 50 per cent only once, that was in 2021, implying that BJP is a bit player in the constituency, and the contest is between the LDF and the UDF.
Also, in 2021, LDF vote share gained 8 percentage points, and the UDF and the BJP's vote share declined by around 5 and 3 percentage points.
The poor performance is despite Kerala co-incharge Dr Radha Mohan Das Agrawal, a Rajya Sabha member, camping in the constituency. Union minister Rajiv Chandrasekhar was another campaigner. In the 140 panchayat wards, BJP has only 11 members. The party bigwigs had camped and campaigned from Kooropada, considered a BJP stronghold, during the bypoll..
