Aryadan Shoukath wins in Nilambur
UDF - 77737, LDF - 66660, P V Anvar (Ind) 19760, NDA - 8648
THE Congress-led United Democratic Front on Monday, June 23, won the bye-election to the Nilambur assembly constituency, wresting the seat from the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) led by Communist Party of India (Marxist). Aryadan Shoukath of the UDF defeated M Swaraj of the CPI(M) in a closely contested fight by a margin of 11,077 votes.
PV Anvar, whose resignation as an independent MLA from the LDF resulted in the bye-poll, was relegated to the third place with 19,760 votes, but dealt a deadly blow to the Left.
This is the second consecutive defeat for Swaraj who narrowly lost to K Babu of the UDF in the 2021 Assembly election from Tripunithura. Swaraj had won the seat in 2016, beating Babu by a margin of 4,467 votes.
Mohan George, the candidate fielded by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who secured 8,648 votes ended up fourth.
Aryadan Shoukath will have a tenure of only 10 months as the Kerala Assembly would be heading for Assembly election in 2026. Swaraj secured 66,660 votes.
The Nilambur bye-poll carried high stakes for both fronts - the nine-year-old LDF government needed to prove its continued relevance, while the UDF desperately sought to break its losing streak before the state heads to the polls.
Both the UDF and the LDF had said that PV Anvar, who contested as an independent candidate after the Election Commission rejected his Trinamool Congress (TMC) nomination citing technical reasons, was not a factor in the election. But Anvar, who presented himself as an anti-establishment voice and campaigned for ending ‘Pinarayism’, was able to create dents in the vote share of both the fronts, according to reports.
In the 2021 Assembly election, Anvar secured the seat with 81227 votes with 46.9 % vote share. UDF candidate VV Prakash won 76713 votes, a share of 45.34%.
More than 1.7 lakh voters had registered their mandate in the Nilambur bye-poll, clocking a voting percentage of 73.22.
Aryadan Shoukath is the son of the late Congress leader Aryadan Muhammed, who represented Nilambur constituency for nearly 30 years. Shoukath is also a film producer and screenwriter, particularly known for producing and writing films that address social issues. He served as the chairman of Nilambur municipality and has held various positions in local governance. He contested the 2016 Kerala Assembly elections from Nilambur but lost to Anvar.
