Kerala Assembly Election 2021, Kottayam profile: Congress' Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan won seat in 2016

Kottayam Assembly Election 2021 | The Kottayam Assembly constituency, which has traditionally been Left-leaning in elections, is located in the Kottayam district of Kerala.

The seat is currently held by Congress leader and former state home minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, who won the 2016 election by 33,632 votes. Radhakrishnan first won the Kottayam seat in 2011, when he bagged the seat by a mere 711-vote margin.

Prominent leaders who represented the constituency in the past include former leader of Opposition in Kerala Assembly TK Ramakrishnan and social worker Mercy Ravi. While Ramakrishnan was a three-time Kottayam MLA, Ravi represented the constituency from 2001 to 2006.

Past election results and winners

In the 2016 election, sitting MLA Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan retained the Kottayam seat with 73,894 votes. His CPM rival Reji Sakhariya polled 40,262 votes, while BJP nominee MS Karunakaram got 12,582 votes.

Total electors, voter turnout, population

Electors:
Kottayam has 1,60,792 registered voters who can vote in the upcoming Assembly election. There are 77,790 male voters and 83,002 female voters in the constituency. Kottayam has 171 polling stations.

Voter turnout:
The voter turnout in the 2016 Assembly election was 78.07 percent. A total of 1.27 lakh voters of the total 1.63 lakh registered electors cast their vote.

Population:
The Kottayam Assembly constituency comprises Kottayam municipality; and Kumaranalloor, Nattakom, Panachikkad and Vijayapuram panchayats in Kottayam taluk.

As per Census 2011, of Kerala's 3.34 crore population, 54.73 percent are followers of Hinduism, followed by 26.56 percent followers of Islam and 18.38 percent Christians. Hinduism is the major religion in 13 of the state's 14 districts.
Malappuram is the only district in Kerala where Islam is the major religion with 70.24 percent of the district's total population following the religion.

The state has a tiny population that follows Jainism (0.01 percent), Sikhism (0.01 percent), Buddhism (0.01 percent) and 0.02 percent (other religions). Nearly 0.26 percent in the state didn't state their religion during the 2011 Census.

Election date and timing

The Kerala Assembly/Niyama Sabha polls will be held on 6 April, 2021, along with Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The day will also see phase three polls in Assam and West Bengal.

The Kerala Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha) has a total number of 140 seats, of which, 14 seats are reserved for the Scheduled Castes and two seats are reserved for the Scheduled Tribes.

The outgoing Assembly has eight female MLAs and rest 132 are male MLAs. The incumbent Kerala Niyamasabha will expire on 1 June, 2021.

Political alliances and Kerala

Elections in Kerala have traditionally been a contest between the UDF and the LDF with power swinging between the two groups.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Congress-led UDF had won 19 out of the state’s 20 Lok Sabha seats banking on incumbency against the ruling LDF. However, repeating a similar feat in the Assembly polls is going to be an uphill task for the UDF.

The LDF has not only managed to overcome anti-incumbency in the 2020 local body polls but also managed to make inroads into UDF votebanks, particularly in Thrissur, Ernakulam, and Kottayam districts.

The NDA, which is emerging as a third front in Kerala, will be hoping to increase its tally in the Assembly polls. However, given that the BJP-led NDA didn't meet the expectations in the 2020 local body polls despite making gains, its ability to impact either the UDF's or LDF's prospects in the Assembly election remains unclear.

Of the seven Assembly segments that are part of the Kasaragod Parliamentary constituency, five are with the CPM-led LDF (four with CPM, and one with CPI) while IUML, a constituent of the Congress-led UDF, is the second-largest party, winning the remaining two seats (Kasaragod and Manjeshwaram) in the last Assembly polls.

BJP didn't win any of the seven Assembly segments that are part of the Kasaragod Parliamentary constituency in 2016.