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.
