Wayanad (Kerala), Nov 23 (IANS): Right from the day the Congress announced her candidature for the Wayanad Lok Seat bypoll, the only thing the people in Kerala were discussing was whether General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra would be able to beat her brother Rahul Gandhi’s victory margin, and on Saturday, she came quite close as she won her first election.
Priyanka Gandhi won the Wayanad by-election with a margin of 4.08 lakh votes. Rahul Gandhi, who won the 2019 polls from Wayanad with a staggering margin of 4.30 lac votes, saw his margin dip in the April 2024 polls, when he won with a margin of 3.64 lac.
Even though Rahul Gandhi quit Wayanad to retain the UP's Rae Bareli seat - earlier held by his mother and former party chief Sonia Gandhi, any annoyance by the people of Wayanad had disappeared when the name of Priyanka Gandhi was announced.
Following the worst-ever landslide that washed away four villages in the hilly district of Wayanad in July, the visit of the Gandhi siblings was received well.
When the election date was announced, Priyanka Gandhi, on her first visit to the constituency to file her nomination, accompanied by her mother Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, received a tumultuous welcome.
From then on, in all, she campaigned in the hilly constituency for 14 days and at each venue, there was a huge turnout.
Incidentally, eyebrows were raised when the poll percentage on November 13 fell from around 73.57% in April 2024 to 64.22%.
But when the counting of votes began, Priyanka Gandhi was racing ahead from the start, and as things stand now, the biggest losers appear to be the CPI candidate Sathyan Mokheri and BJP candidate Navya Haridas as both of them failed to even match the votes their party candidates got in the April 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
While Annie Raja of the CPI got 2.83 lac and BJP state president K.Surendran 1.41 lac, Mokheri was able to manage 2.09 lac only and Navya Haridas 1.09 lac votes.
MLA T. Siddique, who was the election manager of Priyanka in Wayanad, was all smiles and said Priyanka Gandhi called him to express her thanks.
"She will be coming to Wayanad very soon to express her thanks and will be there for the people of Wayanad inside the parliament," he said.