Oomen Chandy's son Chandy Oommen after casting his vote in the Puthuppally bypoll.
Credit: PTI Photo
Congress leader and Kerala former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's son Chandy Oommen has won the by-poll to Puthuppally Assembly constituency of Kottayam district in Kerala with a record margin of around 37,000 votes.
The son will be succeeding his father who had been Puthuppally's MLA for 53 years in a row by winning 12 elections till his death on July 18. Sympathy factor played the key factor for Chandy's thumping victory, while allegations against the ruling CPM and anti-incumbency factors also worked in Chandy's favour.
Chandy Oommen reacted saying that he considered the win as the 13th victory of his father, while Oommen Chandy's daughter Achu Oommen said that the election result was a slap on the face of those who had been haunting their father over the years.
Thirty-seven-year old Chandy Oommen has been working as chairman of Youth Congress's outreach cell and was also a Bharat Jodo Yatri. He holds LLMs from Bengaluru Christ University and National Law University, and had practiced as Supreme Court lawyer from 2016. He also did summer courses at London School of Economics.
Chandy Oommen defeated CPM's Jaick C Thomas, who earlier got defeated to Oommen Chandy twice.
As the counting reached the final stage by Friday noon, Chandy Oommen secured around 79,000 votes while Jaick secured only around 42,000 votes.
Even as Jaick had brought down Oommen Chandy's victory margin to around 9,000 in 2021, this time the local youth suffered a major defeat by securing only nearly 50 per cent of votes secured by his rival candidate.
Chandy Oommen's margin crossed the earlier record margin of 33,255 in the constituency that was secured by Oommen Chandy in 2011.
BJP which secured 11,600 votes in 2021 could only secure around 7,000 votes this time for its party candidate Lijillal.
The CPM had raised allegations of Congress-BJP vote trade during the September 5 polling.