Despite the red flag sweeping different districts across Kerala, some candidates put up a tough fight but did not quite make it to the winning end. What’s worse than losing from the winning side is losing by a narrow margin, which is exactly what happened to these candidates.
LDF candidate Mary Thomas contested against UDF’s Anil Akkara in Wadakkenchery constituency and had quite a nail biting finish. With the numbers from the last voting machine yet to be added, she was trailing by three votes only. However, due to a technical glitch in the machine, the counting had to be delayed till 7.30 pm.
Much to her dismay though, Anil won the seat, if only by the narrow margin of 43 votes.
BJP’s K Surendran was contesting from Manjeshwar constituency and had a similar story. He made allegations of cross voting, and demanded re-counting. And while votes were counted again, lady luck refused to favour him. He lost to UDF candidate P B Abdul Razak by just 89 votes, which had been the verdict even before the re-counting.
Too bad for Surendran, for if he had won, his name would have gone down in history along with O Rajagopal, who helped the BJP to open its account in Kerala.
Peerumade constituency too witnessed a neck and neck fight between the UDF and LDF candidates. The seat slipped from UDF’s Syriac Thomas by 314 votes, and went to ES Bijimol.
Events of similar nature unfolded in Koduvally constituency in Kozhikode and Perinthalmanna in Malappuram district.
In Koduvally UDF candidate MA Razak Master lost the seat to independent candidate Karat Razack for 573 votes. With 579 votes less than UDF candidate Manjalamkuzhi Ali, LDF nominee V Sasikumar lost the Perinthalamanna seat.
Among prominent leaders who almost made it was UDF speaker N Shakthan. While Shakthan put up a tough fight against LDF’s IB Satish in the Kattakkada constituency, he lost by a margin of 849 votes.
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