A high voter turnout was recorded in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry assembly elections on Tuesday, with the Congress along with its allies like the DMK locked in a keen contest to regain turf in South India. In Kerala, where the Left is hoping to beat anti-incumbency to retain power, a feat unseen in four decades, while the BJP is making efforts to build inroads, nearly 74 percent polling was recorded till 7 PM. There was 63.47 percent voting in Tamil Nadu for 234 assembly constituencies and 77.90 percent in Puducherry till 5 PM. The three-phase assembly election culminated in Assam with nearly 79 percent polling in the final round in the state where the ruling BJP is battling the Congress-led alliance to retain power, while the trend of high turnout and violence during polling continued in West Bengal as the ruling Trinamool Congress, the BJP and the Left-Congress alliance put up an intense fight in the high-stakes contest.
DMK Lok Sabha MP Kanimozhi cast her vote in a PPE kit
New Delhi: A high voter turnout was recorded in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry assembly elections on Tuesday (April 6), with the Congress along with its allies like the DMK locked in a keen contest to regain turf in South India.
In Kerala, where the Left is hoping to beat anti-incumbency to retain power, a feat unseen in four decades, while the BJP is making efforts to build inroads, nearly 74 percent polling was recorded till 7 PM. There was 63.47 percent voting in Tamil Nadu for 234 assembly constituencies and 77.90 percent in Puducherry till 5 PM.
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Kerala elections 2021: South holds the key to power
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Synopsis
In the southern block-Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha and Pathanamthitta- the incumbent LDF government has 33 MLAs out of the total 39 in the entire region.
Congress workers at Poojapura Junction during campaigning on Sunday.
(This story originally appeared in on Apr 05, 2021)THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Political leaders and pundits often argue that any front that wins the maximum number of seats in southern districts has a better chance to form a government in Kerala. It’s the diversity of the demographic fabric spread across four districts down south that prompts them to come to such a conclusion.
Is Kerala the next laboratory for BJP to try out ‘Operation Kamala’?
April 06, 2021
K Surendran×
Will it be the suitably ‘muddy’ but untested terrain of Kerala that the BJP may choose to enact ‘Operation Kamala’, which it has carried out with clinical precision in Puducherry after blazing a trail in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Manipur and Karnataka and ultimately forming governments in those States?
Observers here have been debating this possibility after the President of the State unit of the party, K Surendran, went on record more than once saying that the party would rule ‘if it manages to get 35 to 40 seats’ in the 140-member Assembly’, where a contender party/front needs 71 seats to form a government on its own.