Thiruvananthapuram, Sept 8 (IANS): With the final tally of Puthuppally by election still awaited, the Kerala State Congress President K. Sudhakaran on Friday said that the “victory” of Congress candidate, Chandy Oommen, is a vote against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s governance.

“This is a vote against Vijayan’s arrogance, widespread corruption and bad governance. We were sure that we would win handsomely,” said Sudhakaran.

As the results are still awaited, Chandy Oommen is ahead with 36,454 votes.

“There was definitely a sympathy factor for our late leader Oommen Chandy but the vote is also against the Vijayan’s bad governance. We are waiting to hear what the CPI-M has to say now as their secretary M.V. Govindan had claimed that the verdict would be an assessment of the Vijayan governance,” said Sudhakaran.

He said that by crossing 36,000 he has breached the highest victory margin which his father Oommen Chandy got in 2011.

Oommen Chandy got a margin of 33,255 in 2011, the highest in his 12 outings from 1970.

In the fray were Chandy's son Chandy Oommen for the Congress, CPI(M)'s Jaick C.Thomas in his third outing, BJP's Lijin Lal and four others.

In the 2021 Assembly polls, Chandy defeated Thomas by 9,044 votes.

Thomas got over 11,000 votes from what he secured during the 2021 assembly polls.

Of the 1,76 412 electorate, as many as 1,28,535 have cast their votes this time.

The by-election took place following the death of sitting Congress legislator- Oommen Chandy, a two-time former Chief Minister who represented the constituency from 1970 for a record-breaking 53 years.