THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: BJP leader O Rajagopal, who made a historic win from Nemom constituency, never ceded his lead to his nearest rival, V Sivankutty of CPM, at any point. Right from the beginning of counting he took the lead from 250 and managed to reach 1,000 and 5,000 within an hour. His lead touched 7,000 when there were more than 100 booths to count. The lead climbed to 8,160 with 76 booths left and by the time the next four booths were counted, the lead reached 9,140.
The numbers swung for a while but it never went below the 8,500 mark. When there was just 15 more booths to count, the lead was 8,631. Though the win was on sight, it took more than an hour to count the remaining 15 booths and make the results official.
The delay, according to the officials, was due to recounting of 1,024 postal votes. The BJP camp with the experience of losing the seat between the cup and the lip during the 2014 Lok Sabha election chose to wait though the jubilation started from the lower rungs.
The results were finally declared by 1 pm after counting the remaining booths. O Rajagopal who lost six times in various elections since 1989 finally was declared a winner by taking a comfortable lead of 8,671 votes. He got 67,813 from 151 booths while LDF candidate and sitting MLA Sivankutty received 59142 votes.