Polling for elections to Kerala’s three-tier local administration bodies, which is expected to be a clear pointer to who may rule the State after the 2016 Assembly election, will come to a close on Thursday with more than 1.39 crore voters exercising their franchise to elect representatives in 12,651 wards in seven of the total 14 districts in the second and final phase. The other seven districts had gone to the polls on Monday in the first phase.
Campaigning in all the wards where elections are taking place on Thursday went into silent mode on Tuesday evening after open electioneering concluded with colourful shows of strength by workers of the Congress-led UDF, CPI(M)-headed lDF and the BJP, the three main sides participating in the poll process, and other small parties and supporters of Independents.
Thousands of campaigners converged on the headquarters of local administration bodies on Tuesday evening shouting slogans to the accompaniment of percussions and at the peak of enthusiasm, loudspeakers went mum at 5.00 PM. For the 36 hours from Tuesday evening, candidates and their supporters will seek votes silently, mostly through door-to-door calls.
The first phase of the election on Monday had seen enthusiastic response from the side of voters with 77.83 per cent of the more than 1.1 crore voters turning out at the polling booths, as per the final figures provided by the State Election Commission. Observers expect the turnout to be even higher on Thursday. Counting of votes will take place on Saturday.
A total of 44,388 candidates are seeking mandate in the 12,651 local council seats of Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur, Palakkad and Malappuram districts in the second phase. The local bodies going to polls on Thursday include the Kochi and Thrissur city corporations which are witnessing intense battle between the UDF and lDF for power.
Elections will also be held on Thursday in 55 municipalities, 546 village panchayats, 89 block panchayats and seven district panchayats. Of the 55 municipalities going to polls in the second phase, 14 are newly created ones. Elections were held in 9,220 constituencies (wards) in the first phase on Monday.
The most watched municipality in the second phase of the election is perhaps Palakkad, where an intense triangular battle is on among the UDF, lDF and BJP. BJP keeps a lot of hope on Palakkad where the party used to lose power between the cup and the lip but party leaders on Tuesday looked highly confident of grabbing power in the municipality.
“But don’t think that Palakkad alone is our target. The BJP is poised to rewrite the electoral history of Kerala in this poll. There is a tendency among the pundits to associate us with only Thiruvananthapuram Corporation and Palakkad Municipality, but we are certain to grab more local bodies this time,” said a State functionary of the BJP.
However, the actual focus of the second phase of the civic poll is Malappuram which has the highest number of voters, wards and candidates among all the districts of the State. Malappuram district has 12 municipalities, 2,510 local council wards and 8,693 candidates but these are not the factors which are inviting the State’s attention to it in this poll.
It is the collapse of coalition relations among constituents of the ruling UDF and Opposition lDF that has made Malappuram the focal point of this election. The Congress and its closest ally Muslim league are in direct confrontation in at least 24 councils while lDF leader CPI(M) and the front’s second biggest constituent, CPI, are fighting each other in seven local bodies.
Six of the seven districts that went to polls on Monday had recorded higher voter turnout when compared to the 2010 panchayat elections. Kannur was the only district which recorded lower turnout at 80.91 per cent (in 2010, it was 81.04 per cent). Hilly Wayanad (82.18 per cent) recorded the highest turnout while it was the lowest in Thiruvananthapuram (72.40 per cent).