Kerala records 33.40% turnout at noon; VIPs, citizens flock to polling booths
Even as polling kicked off at 7 am in Kerala. top political leaders and citizens flocked to polling booths to vote. An elder voter collapsed and died in Alappuzha and polling was disrupted in a booth in Ernakulam LS
As top political leaders and citizens came out to vote in Kerala on Friday (April 26), the polling percentage touched 33.40 per cent at 12.20 pm, as per the latest official update.
While an elder voter collapsed and died in Alappuzha, polling was disrupted at a booth in Ernakulam Lok Sabha constituency when the voting machine developed a snag. There is a large queue outside the booth at Govt HSS Tripunithura when a polling officer announced that the machine had a problem. Voting is yet to resume.
Polling is happening across 25,231 booths. Kerala had recorded a turnout of 77.67 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Political leaders exercise their franchise
Polling, which kicked off at 7 am, continued despite the rising temperatures. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Congress leader and the Kerala Assembly’s leader of the Opposition VD Satheesan and BJP state president K Surendran were among those who exercised their franchise early in the day.
Others who joined the queues of voters in their respective constituencies after polling booths opened at 7 am were BJP Lok Sabha candidates Suresh Gopi and Anil Antony, son of former Congress chief minister AK Antony.
AK Antony too turned up to vote along with Left Democratic Front (LDF) convener EP Jayarajan and the CPI(M) candidate in Thiruvananthapuram, Thomas Isaac, a former finance minister of Kerala.
Victory claims
Leaders of the LDF led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the UDF and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) asserted that they were poised to win the electoral battle.
Vijayan claimed that Kerala will "gift" a historic win to the LDF, a sentiment echoed by other Left leaders. The chief minister said the BJP would not win even one single seat.
He also predicted doom for the UDF, whose most prominent candidate in Kerala is Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Congress wave?
Antony, Satheesan and Shashi Tharoor, however, claimed a pro-Congress and pro-UDF wave in the state.
They said there was anger against both the Modi government and the Left regime in Kerala, and that this would help the Congress to sweep all the 20 seats. The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) has fielded heavyweight candidates against the Congress across the state, sending out a clear message that its alliance within the INDIA bloc nationally holds no importance for the Left coalition in Kerala.
Leading actors including Sreenivasan, Fahadh Faasil, Tovino Thomas and Renji Panicker also voted.
A total of 194 contestants are contesting in Kerala for 20 Lok Sabha seats. The state has 2.77 crore electors
(With agency inputs)
