Kerala Assembly Election 2021, Kochi profile: CPM's KJ Maxy won seat by thin margin in 2016, eyes second term

Kochi Assembly Election 2021 | The Kochi Assembly constituency came into existence in 2011 after a delimitation exercise. The Kochi Assembly constituency will vote on 6 April, 2021, along with the rest of Kerala.

Congress leader Dominic Presentation won the 2011 poll defeating CPM’s MC Josephine by 16,503 votes. Presentation’s re-election bid was quashed in 2016 by CPM first-timer KJ Maxy.

Maxy is back in the fray again in the upcoming 2021 Assembly election. Also, in the fray are Congress' Tony Chammany, BJP's CG Rajagopal, Shiny Antony of Twenty 20 Party, and Independent candidates Nipun Cherian (of V4Kerala), and Rajaneesh Babu.

Prior to the announcement of the election dates, V4Kerala had announced that it will be registering itself as a political party named ‘V4People’.

Past election results and winners

In the 2016 election, CPM’s KJ Maxy unseated then Congress MLA Dominic Presentation by a margin of 1,086 votes. Maxy secured 47,967 votes while Presentation polled 46,881 votes.

Total electors, voter turnout, population

Electors:
Kochi has 1,77,394 registered voters who can vote in the upcoming Assembly election. There are 86,455 male voters, and 90,939 female voters in the constituency. Kochi has 157 polling stations.

Voter turnout:
The voter turnout in the 2016 Assembly election was 72.24 percent. A total of 1.23 lakh voters of the total 1.71 lakh registered electors cast their vote.

Population:
The Kochi Assembly constituency comprises Kumbalangi and Chellanam panchayats and ward numbers 1 to 10 and 19 to 25 of Kochi Municipal Corporation.

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.