THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Congress senior leader Ramesh Chennithala won the Haripad Assembly seat by a margin of 23,377 votes.
Five hours into counting, the UDF continues to hold a commanding lead in 100 seats across Kerala, showing no signs of the tide turning in favour of the ruling alliance.
In one of the most closely watched battles of the day, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan endured a nervy count before finally securing a lead over Youth Congress leader Abdul Rasheed VP.
After trailing by 700 votes, the two-time Chief Minister clawed back to establish a lead of 2,892 votes by the ninth round, a result that took four hours and seven gruelling rounds to turn around.
Thirteen of his cabinet ministers, however, continue to trail in their respective constituencies.
On the NDA front, the party has managed to hold its ground in Nemom, where BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar retains an early lead.
The alliance also gained the upper hand in Chathanoor with BB Gopakumar. For the UDF, Opposition leader VD Satheesan bounced back from an early setback to open up a substantial lead of 9,041 votes against CPI's ET Taison Master by the tenth round.
The mood at the Congress headquarters at Indira Bhavan in the state capital was one of celebration, as senior leaders, including Satheesan, Chennithala, Shashi Tharoor, and Sunny Joseph, arrived to jubilant scenes.
The results continue to defy pre-poll predictions, which had forecast only a narrow UDF edge. With a voter turnout just short of 80 per cent, widely read as a public push for change, the scale of the UDF's performance has surprised even its most optimistic supporters.
