Padmaja Venugopal, daughter of former Kerala Chief Minister K. Karunakaran, suffered her third consecutive defeat in the Thrissur Assembly constituency, despite her family’s longstanding political influence in the region and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) growing vote share there.
After 16 rounds of counting of votes polled in the April 9 Assembly elections, Venugopal got 28,662 votes and was in third position behind CPI's Alankode Leelakrishnan (33,487) and UDF's Rajan J Pallan who won with 60,290 votes, according Election Commission (EC) data.
Venugopal and the BJP were confident that she would win this time as she lost in 2021, as a Congress candidate, by only 900 votes.
In 2016, she lost the same seat by around 7,000 votes.
Both times, it was the CPI which had won.
This time she lost by a margin of 31,628 votes, as per EC figures.
During the Assembly poll campaign, Venugopal had said that she was sure of getting all the BJP votes in Thrissur, a confidence she did not have when she was in the Congress.
"I am confident of winning from Thrissur as I have faith in the people from here and also because BJP is always concerned about the party's win and not who is going to contest. So, it will work hard to ensure the victory of its candidates. That is a huge relief for me," Venugopal had said.
(With inputs from PTI)