Wayanad LS bypoll: Priyanka Gandhi's lead surges to 3.5 lakh votes

Wayanad: Top Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday appeared to be heading towards her maiden electoral win, from Wayanad in Kerala, after registering an impressive lead of over 3.5 lakh votes against her nearest CPI rival, with party leaders and ally IUML predicting a big win for her amid the counting trends.

The Congress-led UDF's candidate from this hill constituency, Priyanka on Saturday extended her lead by close to 3.5 lakh votes after four hours of counting of the ballots in the Wayanad Lok Sabha bypoll, according to the Election Commission.

Reacting to the lead achieved by Priyanka, Congress' ally Indian Union Muslim League and Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said she would get more votes than her brother Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha polls in April this year and will win by a record margin.

"An amazing first trend on counting day is the massive early lead for our leader @priyankagandhi ji in Wayanad, Kerala, by-election. People of Wayanad are surely going to record in victory margins today and Priyanka ji will make Parliamentary debut with a grand win," Reddy said in a post on 'X'.

IUML supremo Panakkad Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal said that going by the trends, Priyanka will get more votes than what Rahul got and the majority she achieves would also be higher than that of her brother.

A similar view was expressed by IUML's national general secretary P K Kunhalikutty.

According to the latest EC figures, Priyanka had a lead of 3,68,319 with 5,57,451 votes. LDF's Sathyan Mokeri was behind her with 1,89,132 votes and NDA's Navya Haridas was in the third spot with 1,02,849 votes.

Rahul had got 6,47,445 votes and won by a margin of 3,64,422 votes against his nearest rival, CPI's Annie Raja, in the LS polls this year. In 2019, he had got 7,06,367 votes and had won by a margin of 4,31,770 votes.

After winning from Rae Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh as well, in this year's polls, Rahul vacated the Wayanad seat, and the party nominated his sister Priyanka, paving the way for her electoral debut.

The bypoll turnout in Wayanad, which has over 14 lakh registered voters, was around 65 per cent, a decline from the close to 74 per cent in the LS polls held in April this year and much lower than the over 80 per cent turnout in the hill constituency in the 2019 general elections.

The counting of votes commenced at 8 am with postal ballots being taken up first.

The strong rooms, where the EVMs were kept, were opened more than an hour before counting began.

The bypoll for the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat was held on November 13.

Of the 16 candidates who contested, the main contenders are Priyanka, ruling CPI(M)-led LDF's Sathyan Mokeri, a political veteran, and BJP-headed NDA's Navya Haridas.