CONGRESS GAINS IN KERALA IN THE BYE-ELECTIONS IN PIRAVAM

                       CONGRESS  GAINS IN KERALA 
                IN THE BYE-ELECTIONS IN PIRAVAM-2012

Late T.M Jacob

In bye-elections to one Lok Sabha and 9 Assembly seats across the country, the Congress wrested the Udupi-Chikmagalur LS seat from the BJP in Karnataka and retained the Piravom Assembly seat while the AIADMK scored a stunning victory in Sankarankoil and the TRS won 4 seats in AP. In good tidings for it from bye elections, Congress on Wednesday,21st,March,2012, wrested a Lok Sabha seat and Assembly constituency from the beleaguered ruling BJP in Karnataka and Gujarat and secured a morale-boosting win in Kerala where the UDF government has a wafer-thin majority.

However, the party suffered a rout when its candidates were defeated in all the seven Assembly constituencies in Andhra Pradesh where Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) showed its dominance in Telangana region winning four seats and helping an Independent bag the fifth. BJP won one seat in the region. The counting of votes in the Sunday bye elections in 6 states were taken up and completed on Wednesday. With this win in Udupi Chikmagalur, the Congress’ strength in Lok Sabha goes upto 207.YSR Congress, headed by late Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s son Jaganmohan, won the Kovur seat in coastal Andhra Pradesh in its first foray outside the home base of Kadapa in Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh.

In the other bye elections in which counting of votes were done on Wednesday, the ruling AIADMK retained the Sankarankoil Assembly seat in Tamil Nadu as expected and the BJD the Athgarh seat in Odisha.

In sweet revenge in Karnataka, where BJP is battling a leadership crisis and serious corruption charges, the Congress wrested the prestigious Udupi-Chikmagalur Lok Sabha seat from it by a handsome margin of 45,724 votes.

Congress candidate K Jayaprakash Hegde polled 3,98,723 votes as against BJP’s Sunil Kumar’s 3,52,999 votes.BJP’s defeat was particularly humiliating as the Udupi Chikmagalur seat was held by Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda, who resigned from it after he took over as Chief Minister last year.

The Congress has reestablished its hold in the constituency that spreads across parts of coastal and Malnad regions, which had remained a strong bastion of BJP in the last four elections This is the second defeat for BJP in the bye elections in the state since November. BJP rebel candidate B Sreeramulu won the Bellary Assembly seat pushing the ruling party to third place in the November by poll.

JD(S), which had entered the fray with tall claims, finished a poor third as its nominee Bojegowda secured only 72,080 votes.

In Gujarat, where assembly elections are due in another eight to nine months, the Congress snatched Mansa Assembly seat from the ruling BJP by over 6,000 votes. Congress candidate Babuji Thakore defeated BJP’s D D Patel in the constituency which has remained loyal to BJP since 1995.

Congress described the victory as significant as Mansa is part of Gandhinagar, the seat of government power.

The result in Piravom Assembly by elections in Kerala has come has a morale booster for the Congress-led UDF government when Anoop Jacob, a candidate of the one of the constituents Kerala Congress (Jacob), won defeating LDF’s M J Jacob by a good margin of 12,070 votes.

The battle was crucial for both the fronts as UDF’s strength was reduced to 71 in the 140-member Assembly with the death of T M Jacob, while LDF’s number hadf come down to 67 with the recent resignation of a CPI(M) member N Selvaraj.

Anoop Jacob

However, the results from Andhra Pradesh were not pleasing for both the major parties -- ruling Congress and main opposition TDP -- which were routed in all the 7 constituencies. Riding Telangana sentiments , TRS won four assembly seats and an Independent backed by it emerged victorious in another constituency, while the BJP sprang up a surprise by winning the lone seat it contested.The TRS candidates bagged Adilabad, Station Ghanpur, Kollapur and Kamareddy constituencies, while the Independent candidate and former TDP leader won in Nagarkurnool.The BJP, which had aggressively taken up separate statehood agitation and fought a do-or-die battle in Mahabubnagar, managed to win the seat. Kovur, the lone seat in non-Telangana region where bypolls were held, went to N Prasanna Kumar Reddy of YSR Congress romped home.

In Kamareddy, TRS candidate Gampa Govardhan won over his nearest Congress rival A Raja Reddy by a margin of over 44,000 votes.

TRS nominee Jupally Krishna Rao defeated his nearest Congress rival M Vishnuvardhan Reddy in Kollapur by a margin of over 15,000 votes. Jogu Ramanna, also of TRS, has won the Adilabad seat with a margin of over 31,396 votes over his Congress rival C Ramachandra Reddy. In Station Ghanpur, T Rajaiah of TRS secured victory over his nearest TDP rival Kadiam Srihari by a majority of over 32,000 votes. BJP’s Y Srinivasa Reddy bagged the Mahabubnagarconstituency by a margin of over 1800 votes.Independent and former TDP leader Nagam Janardhan Reddy won the Nagar Kurnool segment by defeating his nearest Congress rival K Damodar Reddy by a margin of 27,325 votes.

Consequent to today’s victories, the strength of TRS in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly has gone up to 16.

However, the victory of BJP in Mahabubnagar is seen as an embarrassment for TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao as he refused to concede the seat though both are partners in the Telangana political Joint Action Committee (JAC).

The by election results are a setback for the ruling Congress as its candidates could not win even a single seat.

Worse it stood third in Kovur won by YSR Congress.

It is also humiliating for Telugu Desam as its candidates lost security deposits in three seats. The only consolation it could derive was that it stood second in two seats.The bypolls were necessitated in five of them due to the resignation of sitting MLAs in support of separate Telangana demand. The sitting MLA died in Mahabubnagar which caused bypoll. In Kovur, the sitting TDP MLA quit in support of Jagan, which necessitated the byelection. In the hotly-contested Assembly bye election in Sankarankoil in Tamil Nadu ruling AIADMK candidate Muthuselvi defeated the nearest DMK candidate Jawahar Suryakumar by a massive margin of 68,744 votes. She polled 94,964 votes against Suryakumar’s 26,220

.

The candidates of DMK, MDMK, DMDK and 9 other candidates, who were in the fray, lost their deposit.

In a boost to Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, BJD leader and former minister Ranendra Pratap Swain won the bye-election in Athgarh assembly segment defeating his nearest Congress candidate Suresh Chandra Mohapatra by 47,390 votes.While Swain, a four—time MLA, polled 87,604 votes, Mohapatra who is Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) General Secretary, garnered 40,214 votes.

The Congress party emerged victorious in the keenly fought by-polls to the Lok Sabha from Udupi Chickmagalur constituency in Karnataka. Congress candidate K. Jayaparakash Hegde polled 3,98,723 votes against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s V Sunil Kumar, who secured 3,52,999 votes. JD (S) candidate Bhoje Gowda bagged 45,724 votes. About 66 per cent of the 12.53 lakh electorate had exercised their franchise during polling held on March 18 to fill the Lok Sabha seat that had fallen vacant after D.V. Sadananda Gowda assumed the post of Chief Minister last year. The Congress victory triggered a trail of celebration across the State with party workers bursting crackers and rejoicing the party’s victory. Party workers assembled in front of the Congress office in Bangalore, burst crackers, waved party flags and shouted slogans in favour of the Congress party.

United Democratic Front candidate Anoop Jacob won the by-election from the Piravom Assembly constituency in Kerala on Wednesday with a margin of 12,070 votes.Mr. Anoop Jacob (Kerala Congress-Jacob) bagged 82,756 votes against 70,686 votes secured by his nearest rival and Left Democratic Front candidate M. J. Jacob (CPI-M). BJP candidate K.R. Rajagopal ended up a distant third with 3241 votes. (The Congress-led United Democratic Front is the ruling Front in Kerala and the bypoll result comes as a boost to the Front which has only a slender majority in the Assembly).In the 2011 general elections, Mr. Anoop’s father T. M. Jacob had won from the constituency with a margin of just 157 votes. Anoop Jacob stepped in after the death of his father, then Minister for Food and Civil Supplies, on October 31 last year. He put up quite an impressive show by raising the winning margin of his father.

Mr. Anoop Jacob has been leading steadily since the counting began at 8 am this morning but for a slight advantage of 300-odd votes for Mr. M. J. Jacob at one point. The Left Democratic Front candidate trailed in most of the panchayats. The margin climbed to more than 10,000 within one and a half hours into the counting.

The first round of counting began with the service ballots. Out of 323 service ballots issued by the returning officer, 316 had been returned. On completion of the first round, Anoop Jacob had a slender lead of 127 votes. He secured 7,567 votes as against M. J. Jacob’s 7,438 votes. BJP candidate had 578 votes at this point.Halfway through the counting, Anoop had a lead of 4,440 votes. He had secured 42,419 votes as against 37,979 for M. J. Jacob, when counting votes from 71 booths of the 135 booths were completed by 9 am.Television channels started live coverage of counting as early as 7 am when the officials took their positions at the 14 tables set up for counting at the Muvattupuzha Nirmala Junior School; and those glued to the television sets were expecting a tight competition since the contest was between T.M. Jacob and M.J. Jacob last time.

However, the trend soon became evident and the UDF supporters broke into celebrations straight away. The decisive victory at Piravom will stand the UDF in good stead as the focus now moves to Neyyantikkara, where the CPI (M) Member of Assembly R. Selvaraj resigned amidst the election campaign here.The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS)'s expectations of making a clean sweep of the six Assembly seats in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh could not be fulfilled, with The YSR Congress and BJP winning one seat each on Wednesday.At the end of counting of votes for byelections held in seven Assembly constituencies on March 18, the TRS won four seats while an independent backed by the party, Nagam Janardhan Reddy retained his Nagarkurnool seat. TRS candidates won from Kamareddy (by a margin of 44,465 votes), Station Ghanpur (SC) (32,765 votes), Adilabad (31,396) and Kollapur (15,013), BJP from Mahabubnagar (1,875), YSR Congress from Kovur (23,496) and an independent from Nagarkurnool (18,495).

Barring the Mahabubnagar seat where the electoral trends were too close to call in view of a four-cornered contest, the results in the remaining six seats were true to the expectations of all the political parties. The two biggest parties in Andhra Pradesh -- Congress and the Telugu Desam -- put up a spirited fight in the byelections but did not pin high hopes of winning any seat.

Their leaders were convinced that the sentiment in favour of a separate Telangana State was running high and would translate into votes for the TRS in Telangana while the Jagan factor would tilt the scales in favour of the YSR Congress candidate. The Congress candidates stood in second place in four seats and the TDP in two.

Interestingly, all the winning candidates, barring BJP's Yannam Srinivas Reddy from Mahabubnagar, were members of the current Assembly till they resigned from the membership of the House and their respective parties -- either the Congress or the TDP. The vacancy in Mahabubnagar arose after the death of an independent MLA.The results are a shot in the arm for the YSR Congress as Kovur in Nellore district is the first seat that the party has won outside its stronghold, Kadapa district. Moreover, it will boost the confidence of its cadres to face the byelections which will be held in due course to 18 more Assembly seats and the Nellore Parliamentary constituency. Amost all these seats were rendered vacant after MLAs loyal to Mr. Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy were disqualified. In the case of the BJP, its leaders feel that the party's pro-Telangana stand is once again vindicated as also as its decision to field a candidate against its ally, the TRS. 

                                                            Prof. John Kurakar