Thiruvananthapuram: The Opposition United Democratic Front on Sunday retained the Vengara assembly constituency in Kerala, with the Indian Union Muslim League candidate K.N.A. Khader emerging winner by over 23,000 votes. He defeated P.P. Basheer of the Communist Party of India Marxist.

The victory margin of 23,310 votes was, however, significantly smaller than the 38,057-vote majority his party colleague P.K. Kunhalikutty had earned in the 2016 assembly election.

The by-election in Vengara was necessitated when the sudden demise of parliamentarian E. Ahamed prompted the IUML to choose Kunhalikutty to replace him as MP. This led to Kunhalikutty’s assembly seat at Vengara becoming vacant.

Despite the victory, there was some anxiety in the UDF camp, owing to the 14,747 vote-decline in majority in just a year since Kunhalikutty had won the Vengara constituency in the 2016 assembly election.

The decline in the winning margin is expected to be a point of discussion in IUML, for which Vengara has been a traditional electoral fortress. This was also the constituency that produced the biggest winning margin, for Kunhalikutty, in the 2016 state assembly elections.

Two key aspects of Sunday’s poll result were the sharp increase in votes for the Social Democratic Party of India, and a crushing setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The SDPI candidate K.C. Nazeer came third, though a distant third, with 8,648 votes, while the BJP candidate K. Janachandran had to be content with a mere 5,728 votes despite top national leaders of the party visiting the state and BJP state president Kummanam Rajasekharan holding a rally only a few days before the election.

The UDF had been given anxious moments on the day of polling in Vengara when the state LDF government gave out details of the judicial commission report on the solar power case which had adverse remarks against several Congress leaders.

Reacting to the election result, Kunhalikutty said the UDF candidate won “despite the solar bomb”, while CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan termed the UDF win “only a technical victory”.