Kerala couldn’t have given a clearer curtain call to the state’s protracted Karunakaran drama. In a clear message to the veteran Congress leader, his son and daughter were defeated in the Assembly bypoll and the Lok Sabha seat they fought respectively.The disenchantment also translated into a routing of the ruling United Democratic Front in Kerala. The Left Democratic Front ended up with 18 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats, winning most of them with huge margins of nearly 50,000 votes or more. While one seat was won by the NDA—opening its account through IFDP leader P.C. Thomas—the remaining seat went to the UDF’s E. Ahmed.The Congress that fielded 17 candidates drew a blank for the first time in the history of the Lok Sabha polls in the state. The worst treatment was reserved for Karunakaran’s daughter Padmaja Vengopal, who lost in all the Assembly segments of the Mukundapuram Lok Sabha seat. She eventually lost by 1.17 lakh votes, one of the highest margins of defeat in Kerala.Karunakaran had won the same seat in 1999 by over 50,000 votes. A Congress bastion, Mukundapuram had even withstood the pro-Left wave of 1967. However, even partymen hadn’t been happy with Karunakaran foistering Padmaja as his successor here, and most had kept away from her campaign.Brother and Electricity Minister K. Muraleedharan did little better, losing the Wadakkanchery assembly seat to A.C. Moideen of the CPI(M) by a margin of 3,815 votes. This was the first time a minister had been defeated in an Assembly bypoll in Kerala.The CPI(M) that retained all its eight sitting seats added five to its tally to win 13 of the 14 seats it contested. Among its allies, the CPI won three of the four seats it contested, the Janata Dal (S) won the lone seat it fought and the Kerala Congress (Joseph) retained its Idukki seat.While the BJP failed to win a single seat, it recorded its best performance to date in the state, bagging 12.11 per cent of the votes, surpassing the 8.23 per cent it polled in 1999.
