After producing a remarkable performance in the Lok Sabha elections winning 19 of the 20 seats in Kerala, the Congress and its allies in the state are looking to repeat their success in the six Assembly constituencies prepping for bye-elections. In four of the six seats, elections have been necessitated after the sitting MLAs got elected as MPs to Lok Sabha. The other two seats are vacant after the death of the sitting legislators.
Mullappally Ramachandran, president of the Congress state unit who coined the ’20-20′ campaign slogan for the LS polls, has come up with another cricketing analogy. He exuded confidence that the Congress-led UDF is capable of hitting a ‘sixer’ in the six seats headed for bye-elections in the state.
The seats headed for bypolls are Aroor (Alappuzha district), Konni (Pathanamthitta district), Vattiyoorkavu (Thiruvananthapuram district), Manjeswaram (Kasaragod district), Pala (Kottayam district) and Ernakulam (Ernakulam district). Bypolls are necessitated in Aroor, Konni, Vattiyoorkavu and Ernakulam after the sitting MLAs in these seats – AM Ariff, Adoor Prakash, K Muraleedharan and Hibi Eden respectively — got elected to Lok Sabha. In Pala and Manjeswaram, the demise of sitting MLAs KM Mani and PB Abdul Razak has necessitated the elections.