Top Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was on Saturday cruising comfortably towards her maiden electoral victory from Wayanad in Kerala, surpassing the lead achieved by her brother Rahul Gandhi in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls earlier this year with party leaders and ally IUML predicting a big win for her amid the counting trends.
The Congress-led UDF candidate Priyanka extended her lead by over 3.8 lakh votes after five 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.
"A fantastic first trend on counting day is the huge 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 says that if the present trends are any indication, Priyanka would garner more votes than what Rahul managed and the majority she would achieve would be higher than that of her brother, too.
Similar views were also put forth by IUML's national general secretary P K Kunhalikutty.
On the other hand, BJP leader Anil K Antony, earlier in the day, claimed that though Priyanka has achieved a good lead, her victory margin would be less than what Rahul got in the 2024 and 2019 LS polls in the hill constituency.
As per the latest EC figures, Priyanka was leading with a margin of 3,82,975 on 5,78,526 votes. LDF candidate Sathyan Mokeri stood at 1,95,551 votes and NDA candidate Navya Haridas was third with 1,04,947 votes.
Rahul had garnered 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 gotten 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 witnessed a 65 per cent turnout in Wayanad, which has more than 14 lakh voters, against close to 74 per cent recorded in the LS polls held there in April this year and much lower than the over 80 per cent turnout in the hill constituency in the general elections of 2019.
The counting of votes began at 8 am with postal ballots going first.
The strong rooms, in which 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.
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