THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The byelection result in Konni, which saw the LDF winning the constituency after a gap of 23 years, may point to the internal feud within the Congress over the selection of candidate after Adoor Prakash, who resigned as MLA after being elected to the Lok Sabha, raised a banner of protest when his choice Robin Peter was denied the seat.
But a detailed look at the voting pattern for the three lead candidates as compared to the last assembly and the Lok Sabha elections showed other interesting undercurrents in the constituency. For one, the LDF’s vote share increased only by 2.55 per cent from the last assembly poll in 2016 while the vote share of the Congress candidate plunged by nearly 20 per cent from 50.98 per cent to 31.82 per cent.
So what happened? Obviously, a big share of votes that the Congress lost went to the BJP. The figures too indicate this. The vote share of BJP surged from 11.70 per cent to 28.68 per cent, an increase of nearly 17 per cent.So, why did K Surendran lose despite gaining a huge share from the Congress? Though BJP made significant inroads into Congress votes, Surendran failed to gain the votes he secured from Konni in the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency.
A detailed analysis showed that Surendran could not even match the 32.17 per cent vote share he garnered from Konni assembly segment just five months ago in the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency. Clearly, the Sabarimala issue, which was in the boil during the Lok Sabha election, did not work for him this time around.
Analysts said the open revolt by Adoor’s camp which at one point of time spilled over to the street and the Congress leader staying away from the public meetings during the UDF campaign at crucial times, also affected the Congress candidate P Mohan Raj.
Political observers said though the LDF candidate K U Jenish Kumar was not a popular face in the constituency, he could muster a section of Ezhava votes that earlier went to Adoor Prakash, especially in the backdrop of the NSS’ open support to the UDF candidate.
Mohan was portrayed as the NSS choice for the constituency and it also helped the Left candidate. A small section of Ezhava votes may also have cast their votes in favour of Surendran.