Kannur: The Kannur constituency is still holding its cards close to the chest as the exit polls also indicate a neck-and-neck race in the LS seat held by the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President K Sudhakaran, as per the ManoramaNews-VMR exit polls.

He is locked in a tight contest with CPM state committee member and Kannur district secretary M V Jayarajan with 42 per cent each of the total voters participating in the polls expressing their preference for these two. BJP candidate C Raghunath was the choice of 12.4 per cent of voters.

There is a significant drain in the vote share of UDF from 2019– a dip of 7.53 per cent. The LDF has gained 1.23 per cent in vote share. But the BJP votes doubled registering a 5.91 per cent increase.

In the 2019 LS polls, the UDF had garnered 50.27 per cent votes in the Kannur constituency while the LDF’s share was 41.29 per cent and BJP clocked 6.5 per cent. Independents and others bagged 2.04 per cent of votes. The difference between the UDF candidate and the LDF was 8.9 per cent votes.

K Sudhakaran had prevailed over CPM central committee member P K Sreemathi by a margin of 94,559 votes then. Sudhakaran got 5,29, 741 votes and Sreemathi got 4,35,182. Senior BJP leader C K Padmanabhan got 68, 509 votes. This time the BJP fielded former Congress leader C Raghunath, triggering a tough contest in the seat.