KOCHI: With the thumping victory of UDF, the question in the air now is: Where have the Twenty20 votes gone? A majority of observers assume the party’s supporters favoured UDF as it had not fielded its own candidate this time. The ‘conscience vote’ of the Twenty20-AAP combine went to the UDF’s kitty, thus helping Uma Thomas garner a huge margin, it seems.
The number of votes polled by the UDF candidate increased by 12,931 to 72,770 against the 59,839 in 2021. The LDF’s votes also rose by 2,244 from 45,510 in 2021 to 47,754. In this scenario, the argument that Twenty20 factor had played a key role in the UDF’s huge victory margin gains strength.
D Dhanuraj, chairman of Kochi-based Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR), said Twenty20-AAP votes went in favour of UDF. “However, all factors came in favour of UDF including the votes of Twenty20, P C George issue and others, and the huge victory margin is due to this,” he pointed out.
The Twenty20 candidate garnered 13,897 votes, 10.18%, of the total polled votes in 2021 while the BJP candidate got only 15,483 votes, 11.34%. However, the Twenty20-AAP alliance decided to keep out of the fray citing that the bypoll was irrelevant in present Kerala political scenario.Sabu M Jacob, chief coordinator of Twenty20, said they had requested people to exercise their franchise as per their conscience and it was evident from the bypoll result.
“We garnered about 14,000 votes in 2021 election and there was a possibility of getting about 25,000 votes this time. If we were in the fray, the situation would have been different. Many voters abstained from voting as Twenty20 decided to keep out of the fray,” he added.