For an election that had captured the imagination of the entire State, it was a cold start to the counting of votes in the byelection to the Thrikkakara Assembly constituency, as supporters of both the UDF and LDF were conspicuous by their absence outside the counting centre at Maharaja’s College on Friday morning.
It was as if neither wanted to hit the celebratory mode prematurely and end up with egg on their face. The first lot of flag-waving UDF supporters turned up around 8.45 a.m., as television channels started beaming reports of their candidate Uma Thomas establishing an early lead at the end of two rounds. The small detail that only the result of the first round, involving 10 postal ballots, was officially declared by then counted for little, as they seemed to have a channel intact with their counting agents who confirmed the trend.
It seemed to open the floodgates, as UDF supporters flocked in droves by the minute, leaving an activist to sigh whether everyone who had voted for Ms. Thomas had turned up. As passions boiled over, the first slogans to rent the air were in memory of the late former legislator P.T. Thomas whose untimely demise threw his wife into the fray. The controversial SilverLine project also found a mention among the slogans, as they demanded to pull out the ‘yellow stones’ in reference to the boundary stones laid for the project.
The deriding slogans against former Congress legislator K.V. Thomas who decamped and campaigned for the LDF candidate, Jo Joseph, were not far off, as they compared him to the biblical figure Judas, and warned that he would be taught a fitting lesson soon. As if that did not quell their anger, his images were set ablaze by Congress activists in the hours since.
But that was at best a side show for the overjoyed UDF supporters, as they turned up for celebrations as if there is no tomorrow. It was not an all-men show though, as women turned up in significant numbers and who at one point broke into a celebratory dance cheered by their male counterparts.
“This [victory] is a turning point, something that will galvanise the UDF camp across the State,” said P.A. Anas, a Congress activist in a tee bearing Ms. Thomas’ image while gasping for breath from all the celebrations.
As the fluttering flags of the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) competed both in numbers and size with a lone red flag of another partner RSP amid them, it left no one in doubt about what this victory meant to the UDF. “This victory was needed for our survival. Had we lost this one, we would have found it hard to keep our flock together at the grassroots level,” said Subair K., an office-bearer of the IUML.
As their mother’s victory was a foregone conclusion, in walked Vivek and Vishnu who attributed it to the love of the people of Thrikkakara for their late father.
Even as the wait for the victorious candidate to emerge out of the counting centre continued amid the ever-soaring number of supporters, the excitement threatened to go out of control at one point, as the police barricade cordoning off a short stretch of road on either side of the counting centre was breached and a section rushed towards the entrance to the counting centre before being restrained by the more sensible among them.
As colours were being thrown around, celebratory songs were being played on loop, and crackers were being burst, Ms. Thomas finally emerged, given away by the sudden exalted tempo of sloganeering. She was lifted onto an already overcrowded open vehicle but eventually had to climb down and walk her way to the District Congress Committee office in the neighbourhood, as the vehicle could not make any headway. It turned out to be an impromptu victory procession, the first of many for the day.
