Citing a drastic fall in the NDA's votes in Kerala in the Assembly elections, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan floated allegations of a vote trade between the Congress and the BJP at around 90 seats in the state. The Congress won with BJP's votes in at least 10 seats, he alleged.
Addressing a press meet in Thiruvananthapuram, Vijayan said that the total votes polled by NDA this time came down by around 4 lakh compared to 2016, while the votes polled by UDF increased by around 4 lakh. In around 90 seats the votes polled by BJP came down drastically this time. This vindicates the vote trade between BJP and Congress and it was for this reason that the Congress leaders were expressing confidence of a victory till the last day of the counting. However, the LDF got over 12 lakh votes more than that of the UDF and emerged as winners.
While LDF's vote share increased from 43.4 per cent in 2016 to 45.2 percent this time, the UDF's vote share increased from 38.8 per cent to 39.4 per cent. NDA's vote share came down from 15.01 per cent in 2016 to 12.4 per cent. The election results reflected that the people of Kerala were rejecting BJP, he said.
Vijayan said that the people voted for the LDF from their personal experiences with the government. Hence the baseless allegations raised by the opposition parties did not affect the voters. The new government would also focus on welfare and development activities, he said.
Vijayan submitted his resignation to Governor Arif Mohammad Khan on Monday. He said that the new government would be formed after discussions in the party.