Thiruvananthapuram, May 19 (Agencies) : Former cricketer S Sreesanth, who recently joined the BJP, was on Thursday finished at the third spot in his Thiruvananthapuram constituency in the Kerala assembly elections.
State health minister VS Shivakumar retained the seat.
Sivakumar polled 46,474 votes, winning over his nearest rival Antony Raju by a margin of 10,905 votes. Raju polled 35,569 votes.
Sreesanth came third with 34,764 votes.
As of latest media reports, the LDF is leading in 89 seats, UDF in 49 and BJP in 1.
Sreesanth was given a life ban by the BCCI in September 2013 after being found guilty of spot-fixing in that year’s IPL tournament. However, a Delhi court exonerated Sreesanth along with two other cricketers--Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila--in July 2015 in the high-profile IPL match-fixing case which had blown the lid off cricket’s biggest scandal in recent times.
The 33-year-old had earlier said his name had been cleared by the court in the match-fixing case and he was not worried about any political attack over the controversy.