After more than five hours of vote counting in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, lotus seems to be blooming in Kerala for the first time. While the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) appears to be heading for a near sweep in the state, its two stalwarts Shashi Tharoor and K Muraleedharan are trailing behind Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates, according to the latest trends.
As per the trends, UDF is leading in 16 out of 20 seats. However, Congress’ star candidate Tharoor is trailing behind Union Minister and BJP candidate Rajeev Chandrashekhar in Thiruvananthapuram by 21,000 votes. It may be recalled that Tharoor had won by close to one lakh votes during his 2019 Lok Sabha election.
But the bigger loss seems to come from Thrissur, where actor-turned-politician and BJP candidate Suresh Gopi has upset Congress and LDF. Gopi has maintained a consent lead over rivals VS Sunil Kumar of CPI and K Muraleedharan of Congress since morning. Muraleedharan is in third place, with Gopi leading by 63,000 votes over his CPI rival.
At the stock-taking meeting convened by the state Congress leadership a week after the state went to the polls, Muraleedharan had come out against the Thrissur DCC leadership, especially against local chief Jose Valloor and incumbent Thrissur MP TN Prathapan.
He had alleged that these two leaders had not fully cooperated during his election campaign. In fact, Muraleedharan’s sister, Padmaja Venugopal who recently joined the saffron camp, too had warned him about these two Thrissur-based leaders.
The Congress camp remains hopeful that the situation will change once the counting of votes in the coastal belt begins.
Meanwhile, UDF candidates Dean Kuriakose and N K Premachandran, from Idukki and Kollam Lok Sabha seats respectively, were leading by a huge margin over their nearest rivals, according to early trends.
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